2022 Daihatsu Hijet 4x4 Dump Bed on 2040-cars

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A Daihatsu kei fire truck is making friends all over San Francisco

We have some bad news. Those of you rocking your imported Nissan Skylines and Mitsubishi Lancer Evolutions have been doing it all wrong. If you want to actually make friends and influence people, the JDM car to drive is a 1990 Daihatsu Hijet fire truck. Todd Lappin already has a Skyline, but if Instagram accounts are any measure of success, it's his tiny red kei-class emergency vehicle that gets all the attention. Strangers want to take photos with it, kids want to play with it, and it stands out at any car show. He imported it last year from a small Japanese ski resort town to San Francisco. "The best analogy is walking down the street with a puppy," Lappin told the San Francisco Chronicle, "in the way that everybody becomes their nicest, sweetest, best-behaved self. Doesn’t matter — men, women, young, old. They stop and laugh and have kind of a confused look on their faces." The truck is named Kiri, after its original home of Kirigamine, located in Nagano Prefecture. According to Lappin, the whole town's population is only a couple hundred people. The fire department there was all volunteer, and the truck has only accumulated about 4,000 miles on it since new. After it was decommissioned, Lappin bought it at auction for "almost nothing." Vehicles are federally eligible for import if they 25 years old, a vestige of when Mercedes-Benz lobbied the U.S. government to restrict European imports of its cheaper models.  Because it was built to meet kei specifications, the truck has a 660cc engine churning out 63 horsepower. However, it was never meant for freeway cruising, just around-town hustling. Lappin told the SF Chronicle the Hijet tops out at around 60 mph on the highway, but "it sprints up San Francisco hills like you wouldnÂ’t believe." The truck arrived stripped of its fire equipment, but Lappin reassembled what it needed to become a functioning firefighting tool again. The truck doesn't carry its own water tank. Instead, its onboard pump allows the hose to be plopped into any water source, using an old-school wicker filter to strain out any debris. When asked whether the truck could put out a fire, Lappin mentions that it will live in Somona part-time. Located about an hour north of the city, it's an area that has seen its share of wildfires in recent years.

Daihatsu's Tokyo Auto Salon cars are absolutely adorable

There are some pretty weird and wonderful cars coming to the Tokyo Auto Salon in January, from Honda's vintage-style S660 coupe to the off-road Mitsubishi Delica D:5. But as cool as they are, none can approach Daihatsu for sheer cuteness. The company is showing off special versions of its tiny Kei class cars at the custom car show. We've got photos of most of them, but we're going to highlight the best of the bunch, below. We'll start with the Daihatsu Copen coupe (the little green guy up there). The Copen is the Japanese car company's micro-sized roadster, similar in scale to the Honda S660, except it's front-wheel drive. It also has a trick retractable hard top. The Copen coupe loses the retractable top in favor of a rakish permanent hard top. It's based on a concept from 2016 that clearly was popular enough to merit a production model. The styling also comes from the Copen Cero, which has friendly round lights and soft corners, a significant contrast to the edgy, aggressive Copen Robe and XPlay. The coupe model starts a little over $20,000 at current conversion rates and is available with either a CVT or a five-speed manual coupled to a turbocharged 660-cc three-cylinder engine. Daihatsu is also showing more practical cars including some custom versions of the Mira Tocot. The two that grabbed our attention are the Tocot Sporza and the Tocot Active. The former is an angry red hot hatch with a unique red and black paint scheme. Along the side are giant letters spelling out the Tocot Sporza name. This look has a lot of history at Daihatsu, having been featured on the Mira TR-XX, as well as the Charade De Tomaso. And, yes, we mean that De Tomaso. The Tocot Active, on the other hand, has a simple, retro aesthetic with its cheerful blue paint, plain black door handles, and ultra classy cream steel wheels. Then we have a special edition of what we've previous proclaimed to be the most adorable car in the world: the Move Canbus. It looks like it's just happy to be alive, and looks all the better with the blue and white two-tone paint job that would be right at home on a VW Bus. But the German van isn't where the color scheme comes from. Instead, it's inspired by Hatsune Miku, a virtual character from a Japanese singing synthesizer that is enormously popular in Japan. The blue and white mirror her hair and outfits, and small pops of fuchsia match her hair bows. We also have to quickly note the Daihatsu Hijet Marche.

Toyota's Copen GR Sport is a tiny, racy roadster

In its home market, Toyota has a designated sport brand called GR, which is meant to invoke Toyota's Gazoo Racing division. It has three tiers of sportiness: the entry-level GR Sport, GR, and all-out range-topping GRMN. Ahead of the Tokyo Motor Show, Toyota announced it is adding to its GR Sport lineup a new mini convertible called the Copen GR Sport. Toyota pulled the Copen from Daihatsu's bank of cool minicars. Diahatsu announced its own Copen GR Sport at the Tokyo Auto Salon in early 2019. Now Toyota will sell its own hotted-up version of the tiny roadster. Toyota Gazoo Racing tweaked the new model and gave it sportier equipment and a visual update inside and out. First, let's talk basic stats. The Copen GR Sport weighs roughly 2,000 pounds and has a 0.66-liter turbocharged engine that makes 63 horsepower at 6,400 rpm and 68 lb-ft of torque at 3,200 rpm. It's front-wheel drive and is available with a five-speed manual or a continuously variable transmission (CVT) with seven-speed Super Active Shift and paddle shifters. Toyota left the powertrain alone and chose to focus on body rigidity and suspension tuning. The Copen GR Sport has specific shock absorbers, updated spring rates, retuned power steering, a new front brace, and a redesigned center brace.  Toyota made the Copen a bit more visually aggressive as well. It has a unique front bumper with side air intakes, a larger front grille, and a rear bumper with a new diffuser look. It also comes with matte gray BBS forged-aluminum wheels, LED headlights, LED fog lights, and LED taillights. GR Sport emblems on the front, side, and rear assure passers-by this is not a regular Copen. In total, eight exterior colors are available, as are multiple color options for the roof. The black interior was spruced up with Recaro sport seats with GR embroidery, a MOMO leather-wrapped steering wheel with the GR emblem, piano black accents, and a new GR instrument cluster with red accents. Unfortunately, the pint-sized roadster is only available in Japan.