This is what a Kei car is and why everyone is obsessed with them

This is what a Japanese Kei car is, and why these small cars from Japan have become so popular within the JDM scene.

Kei cars are some of the most obscure cars ever made. They are usually only found in Japan, although some have been imported over to other countries, including the United States, over the years.

They form an integral part of Japanese Domestic Market, or JDM, car culture, and recent years have seen them become more and more popular.

The question on many people’s lips, though, is a simple one: what is a Kei car?

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What is a Japanese Kei car?

The Kei car has its origins in the aftermath of World War II, as Japan tried to rebuild and reestablish itself.

It wanted to become a major player in the automotive industry and needed to grow its domestic market to do that.

So in 1949, the government came up with the Keijidosha class of vehicles.

These had the same cheap purchase cost and insurance as motorcycles, but with four wheels instead of two.

Kei cars are the smallest category of Japanese expressway-legal vehicles, cars you can take on the highway.

Their smaller size and engines mean owners can really take advantage of their lower tax and insurance rates.

That lowers the overall ownership cost.

The cars are also exempt from the Shako Shōmeisho parking-space ownership requirement in rural areas.

The most well-known of the Kei cars

When most people think of JDM cars, they think of cars like the Honda NSX, famously owned by Ayrton Senna.

But Kei cars have now become a massive part of JDM culture.

Over the years, there have been some amazing cars within the segment.

The most well-known from the early days are the Honda S500, S600, and S700, which arrived in the early 1960s.

These had small four-cylinder engines and are now regarded as collectable classic cars.

In the 1990s, sporty Kei cars exploded onto the scene.

The best-known of these was the Honda Beat, with a small inline-three engine under the hood.

Remarkably, it was the last car approved by company founder Soichiro Honda before he died in 1991.

But there was also the wild Mazda-Autozam AZ-1 with its gull-wings, and the equally fun Suzuki Cappuccino.

These small cars still exist today, and Honda built a successor to the Beat, the S660, from 2015 to 2022.

Despite their small size, the popularity of the Japanese Kei car, particularly in America, remains as large as ever.

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