Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

Re:Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks by boredumb on Thursday April 20, 2023 @05:04PM (#35646301)

Where I live the hills would stall that kei out before you got to any real hills, with nothing at all added to the bed.

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Re:Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks by themodelplumber on Thursday April 20, 2023 @05:30PM (#35646641)

I rode in kei-trucks and kei-vans with an adult in every seat, up some very steep and long hills in Japan. We weren't exactly in the fast lane, but there was not any mention of the van not being up to the task. It felt just fine.

In fact my friend was SO excited about his new van (for 1998) that for a while, he was bragging about every last little aspect up and down those hills, every time we rode with him. He lived in a gigantic danchi at the top of one of the steepest hills around, and still loved that thing.

(He worked as a furnace-jumper-inner / furnace-insides-scraper at an auto recycling place all day, and had molten aluminum burns on his arms and sometimes face...I respected the heck out of that guy for what he did to support his family. I think he runs an IT business in Brazil now.)

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Re:Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks by tlear on Thursday April 20, 2023 @05:21PM (#35646533)

Those things are used in mountains in Japan without any issues at all, they are very light.

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Re:Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks by aae42 on Thursday April 20, 2023 @05:22PM (#35646538)

Gear ratios, you might just not be getting up the hills very quickly

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Re:Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks by thebooktocome on Thursday April 20, 2023 @05:13PM (#35646419)

Japan is famously mountainous. I can’t imagine they don’t road test them on “real hills”.

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Re:Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks by pookah on Thursday April 20, 2023 @09:53PM (#35648944)

Japan doesn't have rural American dirt roads.

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Re:Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks by freetime2 on Friday April 21, 2023 @12:16AM (#35649764)

Can you elaborate on what American dirt roads means? Japan has tons of dirt/gravel roads. A typical operating environment for a kei truck might look like this:

https://www.google.com/maps/@36.9510791,138.6746615,3a,75y,2...

They are pretty capable offroad vehicles.

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Re:Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks by thesuitonym on Thursday April 20, 2023 @05:23PM (#35646553)

Why do you believe that?

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Re:Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks by Kye on Thursday April 20, 2023 @05:23PM (#35646560)

I've seen enough attempting greater feats than carrying normal loads up hills in /r/IdiotsInCars to know you're completely and hilariously wrong.

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Re:Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks by kalleboo on Friday April 21, 2023 @12:43AM (#35649878)

Our family car is a kei minivan (microvan?) with power sliding doors (=heavy) and everything.

No trouble going up long or steep hills in windy mountain roads with the whole family of 4+luggage in the car.

No trouble going up long hills at highway speed (120 km/h) with two adult friends in the back.

Aircon on and everything. Works great.

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Re:Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks by boredumb on Friday April 21, 2023 @09:53AM (#35653763)

Guys... it has the same engine as a dirt bike (660cc if i'm reading it right?), I live in a rural area of puerto rico with windy roads on hills where i've stalled out a Toyota Corolla while in first gear, I'm sure Japan has hills but no this would not be able to drive in the mountains of puerto rico much less haul anything that you'd actually require a truck for.

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