Downhill Dino
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The Evo III bumper is adorable.
Kei Central
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Found this frigging awesome Wide-body Carol.Couldn't find any more modified Carols but did turn up a racing version:
And some old ad images:
It has a Harley Davidson engine swap:
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I'll take one of these instead:
N360/600
solid lifters, air cooled, old fasioned... sweet
The Honda on the left is a kei car. The Honda on the right is a KEI car.
Make kei cars kei again!
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The Honda on the left is also significantly further away from frame than the Honda on the right...
I'm sure you're not being totally serious, but can we not be quite so curmudgeonly as to imply that cars whose size regulations haven't changed in 20 years and haven't changed significantly in half a century or so are getting too big?...
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I wasn't saying that kei cars today are full size land yachts. They are very minuscule cars. I'm just saying that 40 or 50 years ago cars could be whatever size they wanted to and when you compare compact cars from back then to today, you notice the difference.
I know the N360 is further back. But it still is a smaller car. Here is a better pick of them next to each other:
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Yes and no. Mostly no in this particular example.
The N360 had to conform to kei car regulations back then, just as the N-One does now. It's smaller not simply because it's older (though Japanese and European cars from the 60s/70s were typically smaller than they are today), but because the regulations themselves required it to be smaller. In 1967 the N360 was only 5mm shorter and 5mm narrower than the kei regulations permitted at the time, and its engine was only 6cc off the maximum. Have a guess how many millimetres shorter and narrower the N-One is off modern day kei regs...
I'm sure Honda could build the N-One smaller, but it wouldn't make sense to needlessly compromise on packaging when there's a defined set of size regulations they can build right up to.
I'd say they've probably done a pretty good job anyway given how restrictive kei-car regs are in a modern context. A first-gen Civic is bigger than an N-One in both length and width (despite being a small car from the 1970s and Honda having the freedom to make it whatever size they wanted within that general classification), yet having driven one recently I'd be surprised if it's more spacious than an N-One. It's probably slower too despite an engine twice the size.
TL;DR it's not Honda willy-nilly building bigger cars because 2018 rather than 1960s, it's the regulations dictating the size of keis and manufacturers understandably building as close to those regs as possible.
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Tried to find some Non-Japanese cars that met the Kei car regulations
Avions-Voisin Biscooter, 1951
Goggomobil T250/T300 Sedan, 1964
Julien MM5, 1947
Peugeot VLV, 1942
SMZ S-3A/M, 1967
Avions-Voisin Biscooter, 1951
Goggomobil T250/T300 Sedan, 1964
Julien MM5, 1947
Peugeot VLV, 1942
SMZ S-3A/M, 1967
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I promise I'm not trying to pick on you here but there's also some perspective (and I think some lowering of the Beetle) going on in that picture!The one on the right is a kei car.
However, I never realized how small the VW Beetle was compared to the Fiat 500 and Subaru 360
The classic Beetle is dimensionally significantly bigger than either of those two cars and longer than some modern small cars. Spec comparison:
Length in metres: Beetle 4.08, Fiat 2.97, Subaru 2.99
Width in metres: Beetle 1.54, Fiat 1.32, Subaru 1.30
Height in metres: Beetle 1.50, Fiat 1.32, Subaru 1.38
So the photo is definitely hiding the Beetle's size somewhat (the camera does lie) as it's on average more than a metre longer, 20cm higher and 20cm wider than the 500 and 360! The pic certainly makes the Subaru look wider than it is, and my guess is the Beetle has been lowered slightly as it looks nowhere near as tall as it should be.
The old 1974 Beetle I used to own was bigger in length and height and roughly the same width as the 2008 Fiat Panda I also owned at the time! The Beetle is a "small car" but it's a long way from being small in context of kei cars and particularly classic kei cars. (You'll note even the oldest Beetles are too long and wide and have engines too big to meet even modern kei car regs).
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You're fine
I knew that bug was lowered especially how high the 500 looked next to it. The bug is a larger car but in terms of width, not too much larger. The extra width is mainly do to the large fenders that many prewar cars were designed with at the time. The Interior is almost as tight in terms of shoulder room as the other two cars but had more leg and headroom.Off topic:
Found this photo. Looks circa 1960. A fairly used 1957 VW and a 1957/9 Fiat 500N collided headon at around 15-20mph from what it looks like.
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K4-GP cars. Do not adjust your sets.
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Cmon, man. The Lil GT40. I'd have that over a real GT40(not like I can afford a real one anyway).
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Downhill Dino
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