"[gallery link="file"] We're unashamed fetishists of automotive design and spend an unhealthy time online and at various car events sifting through the voluminous back catalogue of a century of car culture. Our mission, dear reader, is to dig out "
Good Things, Small Packages
Every now and then we come across a small, Japanese utilitarian vehicles (or kei car) that floats our automotive boat.
They’re designed to be cheap and to help transcend various taxes and other regulations, but inadvertently at times they seem super cool and somehow aesthetically appealing.
We’re not sure why.
But we reckon it’s probably ‘the bonsai effect’.
If you make something composed of stout, practical stuff but condense its essence into a dinky package – you instantly have something that, to western eyes, appears to be transcendent of rigid design orthodoxies.
Suzuki’s Suzulight Carry series of kei utes were born in the early sixties – and our favourite the glassed panel van hot the streets in 1964. September 1964. It had a little 360 cc two cylinder two stroke that produced 21 hp: so a powerhouse it most certainly was not. But think of the fun that could be had buzzing around Japan’s congested cities in one of these things.
Of course, nice graphic design came as standard in sixties Japan, and the catalogue scans here speak for themselves…
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