Our new warehouse construction is nearly done, and we hope to be able to move in soon. To help us transport all the cool products that J-List is going to be bringing you, we bought a new company van yesterday. The one we got is an Every Wagon by Suzuki, and no, I didn’t choose the car because of the wacky English name, although that was an added bonus. With its small 660 cc engine, the car belongs in a class of Japanese vehicles known as kei cars and trucks, meaning “light weight,” identifiable by a special yellow license plate. These “K” vehicles are great for Japan — inexpensive, easy to drive cars with small engines that are able to do just about anything a larger one can do, even drive on the freeway, although it takes a while to get up to full speed. Our van gets great gas mileage, too, around 16 kpl / 39 mpg, and because there are no newfangled hybrid features involved, it was very inexpensive to buy. With gas prices hitting the equivalent of $6.80 a gallon here, these small cars are more popular than ever, even without the tax benefits the Japanese government gives for owning more efficient cars. For some reason, these small “K” cars seem to feature names that are extra strange, like the Suzuki Carry, the Honda Acty, the Mazda Scrum, the Toyota Deliboy and the Daihatsu Applause. Sadly, these ultra-small cars are not generally sold in the U.S., although they’re legal for non-freeway use in some more rural states and for specialized uses, like on college campuses.
