Holy Heck, There’s A Gazoo Racing Daihatsu Copen

Candy Kei roadster will get Toyota’s efficiency treatment. We need a sit down

It could not have escaped your attention that we’re fairly partial to Japan at High Gear. It’s a country of wild and 西武 ライオンズ FA great automotive culture, one among the easiest components being the Kei automotive.

Intentionally tiny and intentionally slow, it may not seem conventional fodder for individuals like us in a world of countless Porsche RS specials and Method 1-engined hypercars. However a bit like lifting up a log and seeing all manner of creepy crawlies bumbling about in the light, the Kei world is wondrously, head-swimmingly diverse. And only correctly seen beneath a microscope.

At one end of the size, tiny tipper trucks and fire engines. At the opposite, the Gazoo Racing Daihatsu Copen. Japanese automotive corporations intertwine like these right here in Europe, and thus Daihatsu’s relationship with Toyota has led to the performance therapy acquainted from the Yaris GRMN and new Supra filtering right down to one of the world’s titchiest sports vehicles.

In step with Kei rules, the Copen’s normal, 63bhp 660cc engine hasn’t been touched. So it’s not out of the blue going to burn M3s on the lights. But Gazoo has seen match so as to add muscle to the Copen’s often cutesy bodywork, while tweaking the suspension and fitting some merely spectacular gold 16in BBS wheels.

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Do pink and gold go? They flipping well do right here. We’re smitten. Look on the little Recaros poking up from the interior! And those weeny, weeny exhausts swamped by a needlessly large diffuser! It ventures so far into the foolish zone it saunters triumphantly out the opposite side, and we’re desperate for a go.

Officially an idea for now, the Copen’s ludicrously customisable model vary — which includes 4 different physique styles, including a faux-by-four crossover-wanting factor — means it’ll almost definitely make manufacturing. We must import them all.