I’ve fawned over kei cars for years. Growing up I’d buy the $10 imported Japanese car magazines just so I could look at pictures of them, but it’s hard to find video reviews of new modern kei cars online. So when I found this Australian video review and I was truly shocked by how spacious these little boxes on little wheels are. The presenter is about six-foot-two and he is positively swimming in every seat in the car, plus the storage and seat configuration solutions mean they offer more usable space than most full-sized cars. I was totally ignorant to how advanced these comically small runabouts have become.
In order to be classified as a kei car, vehicles must be shorter than 11-feet 2-inches, and have tiny engines that are smaller than 0.6-liters. Both the Honda N-Box and the Suzuki Spacia in this review are 18-inches shorter, nearly a foot narrower, and a foot taller than a 2025 Mini Cooper two-door, yet the six-foot-two presenter has ample room up front and behind his driving position. The space efficiency of these designs is truly mind-boggling, and they both offer big car features like active safety features, automated cruise control, and blinds for rear passengers.
Modern kei cars are also impressively safe, with a study from the National Library of Medicine showing that kei cars provide similar levels of safety for occupants in real-world frontal crashes to standard cars. As soon as the presenter said the cars in this test are fun to drive especially at low speeds, I was sold. Though they are tall and narrow vehicles on tiny 14-inch wheels, hearing that they’re still fun to chuck around makes me want one even more. Watch this review and turn green with envy because you can’t import one of these brilliant little cars for another couple decades.