Someone is importing old Japanese Kei cars to the US, including one that was an unobtainium dream car for me back in the Nineties: The Mitsubishi Minica Dangan ZZ.
In addition to having an extremely metal-sounding name, the Dangan ZZ had a turbocharged and intercooled engine sporting five valves per cylinder. Granted, said engine was a hopelessly twee little three cylinder boasting pistons the size of teacups, but still...
The Nineties were to the Japanese automotive scene what the Sixties were to ours. The manufacturers were engaged in a savage performance war at every price tier in the marketplace. At the top end of various model lines you had cars like the 300ZX Turbo, 3000GT VR4, RX-7 Turbo, and Supra Turbo. Each successive model iteration of those monsters would get quicker and faster, despite them all officially producing only 280bhp...since that was the official power ceiling in Japan:
"By this time, many of Japan’s sports-car engines were capable of producing well over 400 hp, but they were all still restricted to 280 hp. As might have been expected, some cars, such as the Nissan Skyline GT-R, had already started to push the power envelope by generating — in reality — over 320 hp. But in typical Japanese fashion, these cars were still rated by their makers at 280 hp."Similarly, Japanese Kei car regulations in the Nineties imposed a power ceiling of 64bhp, and no matter how many extra valves per cylinder, turbos, or intercoolers they strapped to these things, they never seemed to make more than that. Weird.
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| Pic from Wikipedia. I haven't seen one in the wild...yet. |
