Toyota’s revived Scion brand will sell a kei truck capped at 25 mph
Christina Dravis dragged a tiny, imported truck 300 miles north from a dealer in Maryland to her home in upstate New York — and found out it was illegal to drive. She is now part of a coalition of kei-loving New Yorkers, the Empire State Kei Advocates, which is fighting to make the vehicles legal in the state.
Kei cars — the minuscule trucks, vans and sports cars native to Japan — are popping up across the United States even though carmakers do not make or sell them here. Owners like Dravis give them a second life as recreational vehicles and even work trucks, but they run into roadblocks: New York is one of several states that typically block owners from registering them.
The vehicles are tiny by American standards. Kei, short for “keijidōsha,” the Japanese term for “light vehicles,” describes a class of cars that Japanese drivers in big cities and rural areas alike have favored for decades for their cheaper insurance, superb fuel economy and maneuverability. Kei vehicles top out around 11 feet long — about half a crew-cab on a Ford F-150 — and carry engines more akin to motorcycles than automobiles.
American fans have to buy them through an importer, and because of safety and emissions regulations the cars must be 25 years old or older. In the past few years the business of importing used cars and trucks from Japan has grown quickly, with shops specializing in kei sales and imports popping up across the country. The vehicles typically cost about $5,000 to $15,000 and draw lots of attention on American roads.
State DMVs have paid attention, too. New York has language in its DMV guidelines explicitly denying the vehicles’ registration unless they are proven to meet U.S. safety and emissions standards at the time of production — a showing that would be essentially impossible. The New York state DMV declined to comment.
For Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, the niche is an opportunity. The company said this week that it will sell a new kei truck in the U.S. under its revived Scion brand; to keep it legal in all 50 states, the truck will be restricted to just 25 miles an hour.
Other states have drawn harder lines or produced courtroom wins for owners. Georgia, Maine and other states ban the vehicles from the roads outright, while kei fans have won legal battles in states like Texas and Vermont.
The New York campaign began when Joey Iorio, a construction worker, pulled into work and saw his boss sporting one of the compact vehicles. “I just kind of fell in love,” he said. When he could not get one for himself, Iorio scoured the internet for allies.
He found them in people like Dravis, who has been penning letters to state legislators in between driving her new truck up and down the driveway. The goal, according to the advocates’ manifesto, is to build a following “of like-minded individuals” that, with the backing of the local car community and importers, will push lawmakers to make kei cars legal in the state.
The coalition is an eclectic band of auto enthusiasts, mechanics, farmers and small-business owners united by their love of the tiny machines. Iorio partnered with David McChristian, who had founded a similar group in Texas.
The ban is “incredibly stupid,” said Justin Dedonna, a Long Island mechanic who is on his third kei truck. “The least of the New York DMV’s problems is what the hell I’m doing with my weird little truck,” he said.
Enforcement of New York’s law has been uneven. Some owners, like Dedonna, said they registered their trucks without a problem. Others have navigated gray markets to secure license plates, often registering their vehicles out of state.
Noah Becker registered his 1998 Suzuki Carry by describing it as a normal pickup truck; he now drives it to work in the Buffalo area every day. Buffalo-area resident Ernie Thalhamer noticed the Suzuki, tracked Becker down on Facebook, then bought his own truck and registered it in Montana, where such laws have historically been much looser. The two are friends now and have joined the fight together — Thalhamer recently spotted a state assemblyman at a cocktail hour and made his pitch.
An online petition has garnered more than 1,000 signatures, some with emotional pleas. “I don’t want to buy an overpriced useless modern truck with creepy cameras and other distracting things like a huge tablet to control everything,” one signatory wrote.
The kei-car community insists that the vehicles are safer than plenty of what is already on the road, like motorcycles and even older vintage cars. “A friend of mine has a 1903 horseless carriage with a motor that he’s able to register as a historical vehicle,” Dravis said. “And I can’t register my little truck?”
The effort is being closely watched by kei activists around the country, who hope that if New York legalizes the trucks, others will follow. Some see the fight as a broader means of pushing back against the bulky, expensive cars that now dominate the American landscape.
“Vehicles are in an arms race for who can be bigger,” said John Heylin, who has pushed for a similar bill in Oregon. The 6-foot-3 Oregonian found the kei cab less accommodating. “I hopped into the thing,” Heylin said, “and my knees stuck out the window.”