Car Madness

Kei cars forever!

I wrote yesterday about my neighbour's car and it's annoying fan belt. Well he has a van too, which happens to be really cool.

It's a tiny narrow little thing that I refer to as a Bedford Rascal. This one doesn't go by that name, but its basically the same.

I looked it up on wikipedia, and it turns out this van is a Japanese design. Bedford was a part if the Vauxhall brand. I thought this little van was a British design, but no. Turns out its a japanese kei car, by Toyota... I think.

It's been around since 1961, and they're still selling it right now, as I type.

It's been sold under an incredible variety of badges...

Suzuki

Bedford

Vauxhall

Ford

Chrysler

GM

Thats amazing. Vauxhall and Ford are sworn enemies. Well, GM and Ford, as Vauxhall is owned by General Motors.

They all a want a piece of this awesome little van, and so they should. It's a great design. The engine is under the front seats... you lift the seats up to access the engine.

Isn't that great? If you want to check the spark plugs while its raining, no problem. You can do that while sat comfortably out of the weather, with the radio on.

That's my idea of a luxury car... A van.

I always knew the Bedford Rascal was a cool cute little thing, and its always been the van I'd choose, but I didn't know it was a Kei car until just now.

Well of course! It would be. Loads of kei cars are cute and awesome and cleverly designed...

I wish I could remember the name of it now, but there's a little turbocharged four wheel drive kei car, with a bonnet scoop for the intercooler, just like a Scooby, but much much smaller.

A mini-impreza. Genius. I'd choose the little one over the full-fat rally legend. Honestly.

I love tiny little fast things. Nippy and eager to turn, quick to accelerate... easy to park.

And kei cars are rare here. I'm not a sheep... I don't like standard issue boring safe cars that everyone else is driving. I have fallen asleep at the wheel once... I was driving a Ford Mondeo, and it was really dull.

The Bedford Rascal isn't rare here in Eggland though. While Japanese tax laws are irrelevant here, the need for a small and well designed van is strong.

Vans are needed the whole world over. I guess that's why it's been sold under so many brands and names... The owners can make a deal with whoever sells cars in these areas in need of vans. (That is... Everywhere)

Fuck, there's a manned mission to Mars coming up in the not so distant future... I bet they'll be needing versatile means of moving stuff around over there.

Toyota should make a deal with NASA, who should call their van the NASA Space-Rascal.

Back to reality... They'll just develop their own mars van with a shitload of taxpayers money, while sensible people would drive a really cute modified kei car on Mars, obviously.