CHARLIE CALDERWOOD, FEATURES EDITOR
When you’re looking to have fun with little fuel, it’s all about building light and finding an engine with a high specific output. And there’s nowhere better to look for that than Japan and the kei car master: Suzuki. With hardly a drop of oil to be found from Okinawa to Hokkaido, Japan has not just a decades-old culture of fuel-saving, but a government mandate. The keijidōsha – more commonly known as kei – cars are built to strict maximum exterior dimensions, engine capacities and power outputs, which has made them among the smallest cars in the world. The reward is cheaper taxation and over a third of cars in Japan are kei, proving a far more successful policy in cutting foreign oil dependency than the previous effort, which came to an end in 1945.
When it was looking to create a more exciting image going into the 1990s, the prolific Suzuki followed the familiar method of raiding existing production lines for parts and enclosing them in a lightweight roadster body. For power, it had a proven turbocharged variant of the F6A three-pot that powered its kei fleet. It’s a tremendously revvy 12-valve 657cc unit that, thanks to its turbo, pulls well from 3000rpm where you might expect a tiny twin-cam to be gutless. It races to its thrilling 9000rpm redline, rewarding you with wastegate whooshes when you change up. It’s a childish joy, but one that doesn’t get old.
That sense of fun goes further still in the bodywork. It’s a cute car with its large anime-eye headlights, though it doesn’t go so far as to be a caricature. Then there’s the roof, which is gimmicky in the best tradition of the Japanese auto industry in its economic-bubble years. Hardtop, T-top, targa and full roadster – the Cappuccino does it all, with the roof splitting into three to fit neatly into the tiny boot.
For all the smiles on the surface, however, there’s also a serious and capable driver’s car here. It’s a bit tricky to get into a Cappuccino but
