Suzuki’s Tokyo show concepts crank up the crazy
Prepare to fall in love with the Air Triser and Mighty Deck
Soon it will be the Tokyo motor show, and our biennial look at some truly bonkers Japanese concepts. This makes us happy.
Suzuki is first out the traps, and it’s given us not only a pair of wonderfully wacky cars, but truly daft names to go with them, too. Meet the Air Triser and the Mighty Deck. Really.
The former is straight out of the ‘square’ school of Japanese car design. It may look like a Kei car, but its 4.2-metre length ensures it sits comfortably outside the size regulations of Japan’s titchy car class.
It’s still shorter than a Ford Focus, though, and that’s despite it housing three rows of seats, ensuring you can cart many friends around.
Those seats can slide and fold to create all manner of seating and bedding arrangements, too, while the steering wheel folds out of the way should it become a hindrance. Pick only the friends you wish to know well, then.
There is a powertrain – a 1.4-litre hybrid that powers all four wheels – but in truth driving this comes secondary to gawping at its laminated wood flooring and ‘which way is it pointing?’ looks. We’re smitten.
If you’ve a Kei car appetite that needs sating, though, allow us to introduce you to the Mighty Deck. If there’s a car out there that looks more like a befuddled pug, we’re yet to write about it.
There's wood lining everything from the interior to the bumpers via its sweet little pick-up bay. It further strengthens our suspicions that the head of Suzuki design simply ordered too much flooring for his new kitchen and didn't want to put it to waste.
No matter, because if anything, we’re even more taken by this. Being a Kei car, it’s got a weeny 658cc engine, again with some hybrid tech though this time powering just the front wheels. Performance won’t be its forte, but personality surely is.
Suzuki made something similar in the Eighties – stick Suzuki Mighty Boy in your favourite search engine – so we’ve high hopes a spiritual successor makes production. And bring it here please, yeah?
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