Owning a Japanese kei car in the United States is an adventure most drivers never experience. When skyrocketing used-car prices led me to import a 1996 Subaru Vivio Bistro from Japan in 2021, I expected a quirky, economical runabout. What I got was a charming little car that excelled around town, turned heads everywhere it went, and constantly reminded me that it had been designed for a very different world. With that, I introduce you to “Kenichi Smith”: The tiny Subaru unprepared for American roads.
First, a bit of background. By 2021, I had begun work as an attorney for a small firm, and with this work came money and improvements in my life. Meanwhile, the world was going through its post-pandemic shock and its shortages. For the first two years of the pandemic, the only shortages that really affected me were those for primers and aluminum cans. I had cars, and I did not need another one. However, L, my partner, did.
L had returned to New Mexico and my life in mid-2020. She learned to drive in October 2021, and her brother in California had shipped her his VW eGolf for her to use. It was a great little car that did not fit her life at all. L lived in an apartment in Santa Fe, where she was not allowed to charge her car. The eGolf had double-digit range, which dropped considerably when pushed to highway speeds or went anywhere near a hill. This was unfortunate for L, as her children lived in Pecos, which is several miles up I-25 from Santa Fe, through some very serious hills.
By May 2022, it was clear L would need a gas-powered car, but there was not a good option on the market. Cars I would not make my worst enemy drive were commanding thousands of dollars. Toyota of Santa Fe was looking to get $10,000 for a 2007 Matrix with a quarter-million miles on it. They must have gotten it, because I did not have a chance to inquire about it. A creative solution was needed.
I had toyed around with the idea of importing cars before. Japan has an entire customer-facing industry for exporting cars, and it is easy to browse and window-shop. Window-shopping turned into real shopping, and I decided on a particular Subaru Vivio Bistro, a retro-styled kei car. It had a 660cc inline four hooked to a CVT, driving only the front wheels. I would have preferred a stick, but the car was more for L than for me, and the chances of L learning to drive stick were quite low.
So, I made arrangements through the Import Guys, and then came the interminable wait. Due to the outbreak of war in Eastern Europe, there were few available ships in the area, and the Subaru sat waiting for months for a ship. Finally, in about August 2022, it was loaded onto the Hoegh Shanghai, a roll-on roll-off transport and shipped off to Freeport, Texas. From there, it would go to Las Cruces, New Mexico, where I had once gone to college and where my brother now lived.
To say I was excited for the delivery of the Bistro is an understatement. The Bistro was set to arrive the morning of October 1, 2025, and so L and I intended to leave that morning and pick up the car from my brother that afternoon. Instead, L and I left before the sun rose, and I was in Las Cruces before the Bistro. While the plan had been for my brother to take delivery and do a service at his place of employment, I ended up taking delivery and driving it up to the service bay. I had managed to surprise my brother’s colleagues with something they had never seen before, and it drew quite a crowd as my brother inspected it and changed the fluids. After he finished his job, it was finally mine.
My initial driving impressions were mixed. The CVT had a sport mode, but I defy anyone reading this to explain why. It was glacially slow. While it had a nominal top speed of 88 mph, it took its sweet time getting there, and it would not get there at all on a hill. The steering was precise, but it was numb and overly light. For somebody raised on BMWs, these were serious let-downs.
However, the Bistro had a lot more positives than negatives. The most obvious benefit was fuel costs. I bought the Bistro at a time when gas prices were quite terrible. Despite this, my first full tank in the Bistro was just over $20. Its gas tank held a little over 7 gallons, and it would go over 200 miles on that tank no matter how I drove it. It had excellent visibility, and I knew where all four corners of the car were at any time—a very important thing when your steering wheel is on the wrong side of the car. It was easy to park, easy to drive in dense traffic, and despite its diminutive size, its cargo capacity was incredible–provided the rear seat was folded down.
Driving it in Las Cruces for the first time highlighted more of its virtues than its faults. However, leaving Las Cruces highlighted how little the Bistro was prepared for American roads. The drive home was uneventful but terrifying all the same. I had my foot pinned to the floor the entire drive home, managing to do about 65 MPH. To pass the time, I played a game I call “Who is paying attention?”, where I looked at other cars as they passed me to see who was gawking.
After this trip, I named it “Kenichi Smith,” after a joke I saw on the internet. It seemed fitting; the Subaru was entirely unprepared for America while dressing up as something it was not.
The Bistro served us well for about a year, although it was clearly out of its comfort zone during that time. It was a true four-seater, and we could only carry four people at any time. While this was fine when it was just us and L’s children, if we had a child of our own, it would be inadequate to carry the whole family. It was also grossly inadequate for highway use in New Mexico, as it could not sustain speeds of 75 MPH if it came within spitting distance of a hill. In fact, even the 55 MPH roads of Rio Arriba County and Taos County were a bit much for it due to the topography, and if we needed to go anywhere further than Santa Fe, we took something else.
Finally, my lovely wife would not stop crashing the poor thing. In one year, my wife had three accidents in it. The first one (by far the worst) was her fault, too. It left the Bistro’s face twisted out of shape. The second was minor. She was rear-ended at a stoplight. This left the hatch a little loose, but we did not care by that point. We felt it could not get any worse than it already was. The universe decided to prove us wrong, and my wife got into an accident during a snowstorm in January 2024. The other driver blamed her, and she blamed him, but the only thing that mattered to me was that, because the accident occurred on tribal land, the police did not get involved and our insurance cost did not increase again.
After this accident, I declared the Bistro finished. My brother came and collected it, carrying it back to a plot of land he had purchased. He still has it, and it still works. Meanwhile, we bought a much more boring family car that stayed with us for less time, and which died a far harder death.
Related CC reading:
Curbside Classic: Subaru Vivio Bistro – Boxster Day Find
I find this thing beautiful .
Sad to hear it wasn’t able to reach / maintain safe highway speeds (65 + MPH) , I wonder of perhaps it had issues, I find almost every vehicle I touch to have 20 + year old or the original fuel filters in place, changing them always improves every aspect of operation .
Tiny cars are a thing many Americans will never get, I love them but went through my right hand drive phase in the 1970’s .
I hope it’s not rude to ask how much it co$t to buy and ship it here ? .
-Nate
It’s not rude at all. I think I had it in an earlier draft but it didn’t really fit. Thank you for commenting.
It cost me a little over $6700 all in. The invoice was $5728.63 to Texas. Inland shipping was about $789. It cost me another couple hundred to register it. The car was $1800, so shipping was the primary expense.
It would have worked better in a flatter area. It would reach 75 mph if the conditions were right (downward slope, good tailwind) but the furthest I ever took it was Taos. That trip cost me $8 in gas, so I couldn’t complain much. That’s actually when I took the cover photo, as my wife and I were taking pictures for our wedding announcement and I took the opportunity to take that picture.
I had a Suzuki Alto kei car while I was living in Japan circa 1997. Mine was a 550 cc model, with a manual transmission. First and foremost, these cars were never designed for any highways, even in Japan. They are designed to be urban runabouts and they excel at that. My Alto may have had like 35 hp, but it seemed peppy around town.
I would never import one as I don’t want to drive a right hand drive car.
Thanks for this account. Kei cars make a lot of sense in the way they are used in Japan: within an urban metro area. But the wide open and mountainous West is obviously not its thing. The high elevation of Taos (some 7,000′) alone was sapping the little engine some 21% (approximately 3% per thousand feet). That means it was down to some 49 hp, and less when climbing to higher altitude. You were reliving driving a VW Beetle in the late ’60s or ’70s. One of the turbocharged kei cars would at least have maintained its max. 69 hp rating in the high elevation.
When discussing it with L, I had repeatedly referenced the Beetle for why the 40-odd horsepower would be enough. I had actually accounted for the elevation, but I hadn’t accounted for torque. The Beetle made 40-odd horsepower with 64 ib-ft of torque, and low in the RPM range at that. The Subaru made about 40, and much higher in the revs. I actually considered bringing a turbocharged kei car in at one point, as well as the supercharged variant of the Vivio, but others’ accounts seemed to indicate that I still wouldn’t really have something fit for purpose, and I came to the conclusion that I needed more torque. I think the absolute bare minimum I’d need here would be a 1.0 liter, such as the Daihatsu Mira Gino 1000, but I’d still be struggling with hills and highway speeds.
Having driven I-25 the length of New Mexico numerous times in recent years, I don’t think a Beetle would be anywhere in the top 500 choices of cars to drive either, there are just so many hills and sort of whoop-do-do sections (such as between ABQ and SantaFe and more south of Socorro) that leave many regular more or less modern cars with the accelerator pedal pinned to the floor, maintaining 75 is a chore even without the frequent wind at the constant elevation. Perhaps one of the more taxing long stretches of interstate overall.
It sounds like fun though having something like this, although if it was more confined to Santa Fe or ABQ rather than traveling a lot would be better. Perhaps back in the days of the double nickel, but nowadays most highway traffic is trying to exceed 80 down there…I’ll be driving it again in a Jeep Wrangler in a couple of weeks, another vehicle not ideal for such an undertaking although we’ll hardly be the only ones.
A BMW (perhaps something like the E23 BMW 745i turbo I found and wrote up in the ABQ junkyard) though? Oh yes, perfect for that.
P.S. I finally made a stop in Pie Town, N.M. a couple of months ago. The pie shop there is not to be missed. It’s about 80 miles west of Socorro on 60…I can highly recommend the Amish Oatmeal Apple Pie with a scoop of ice cream but ALL the choices looked excellent.
The VW 1600 was rated at 73 lb.ft @2200 rpm and 46 hp according to the European DIN rating, which is quite close to the SAE net ratings used here after 1971. Yes, that’s even quite a bit more than the supercharged Vivio engines, which went from about 55 to 66 ft.lbs of torque. Some of the newer turbocharged kei cars do even better than that.
Yes, a 1.0 L non-turbo would still struggle in these conditions; probably no better than a turbo 660 cc. As Jim pointed out, these are very challenging conditions, between the altitude, grades and high average speeds. Even my 1.5 L xB struggles some under similar conditions. This are precisely the kind of conditions that favor powerful engines.
Very interesting. That explains why some kei-cars’ export variants get bigger engines. Like the first-gen Daihatsu Copen; a kei when at home but a 1.3 for export. There’s the torque you need. That’s fine for Daihatsu, but I don’t know that Subaru had a bigger engine that would fit. They have a big gap in their range between the keis and the Impreza.
Maybe the next class up from a kei would have been more successful. As you say above, a 1.0 litre might be better. Possibly with a turbo to cope with the altitude.
Ah well, we live and learn!
With American safety standards and emission requirements, I’m wondering how you were able to import this tiny little vehicle. The smallest vehicle I have driven was a Suzuki Swift with a 1.3 four, for city driving it was not bad, but out in the highway it was a handful, passing trucks blew it all over the place.
25-year rule. Cars become exempt from safety and emissions restrictions as of 25 years after their date of manufacture. For import purposes. You can import just about anything so long as it is older than 25 years. The Subaru was a 1996, so when I ordered it in 2022, it was 26.
Vehicles that are more than 25 years old are exempt from federal regulations. But some states have refused to register kei cars. It’s a rather complicated and contentious issue. But importing 25+ year old cars from Japan (and Europe) is quite common. There are many importers that do just that or one can direct import oneself.
Great story. And brave driving! It really does reinforce the misunderstood notion, in relation to cars, that local conditions are everything. By this, I mean that what can look just plain stupid in one country is entirely right in another. For example, I’ve learnt from this very site that the mammoth US pick-up class is in fact deeply embedded in the auto infrastructure in the US, such that there are no automotive alternatives to do what they do, in the conditions they have to do it. (Also aware heaps of them are in suburbia without such roles, but that’s another story).
My, this bistro would be squeezy if it got popular, no?
I remember the outlandish car prices then, so your solution was quite inventive, even if the result turned out to be less than ideal for your use conditions. I remember wondering at the time what I might do if I needed a car, and kept coming back to old oddball things that were not so expensive. However, most of those would have lacked air conditioning and modern safety equipment, so your trade-off was probably a good one.
I’d be more interested in Kei cars if the Oregon DMV was less hostile. I still have a dream of getting a Mitsuoka Viewt and calling it Morse San, since the Viewt is a Nissan Micra disguised as a Jaguar MKII.
We do have a JDM vehicle i the family since my son has a Toyota HiAce, and a friend in Japan
I’ll try (I will!) not to sound all preachy-scoldy, but the states refusing to register JDM cars are more right than wrong. Wrong- (i.e., right-) hand-drive vehicles are much more likely to be in a crash than comparable right- (i.e., left-) hand-drive vehicles. The TLDR is RHD vehicles are involved in 40 per cent more crashes than their substantially-similar LHD counterparts. This is primarily due to inadequate and improper sightlines; a driver seated on the curb (RH) side in RH traffic can’t see to safely overtake other vehicles on a 2-lane highway, among many other scenarios.
Also, Japan-spec vehicles, no matter where the steering wheel is, have headlamps for left-hand traffic. Using them in right-hand traffic throws most of their light into oncoming drivers’ eyes while depriving the equipped driver of even barely adequate seeing distance down the RH side of the road. This is built into the lamps’ optics; it’s a separate matter from lamp aim and it can’t be adjusted out or otherwise compensated.
Yeah, it’s a drag when we can’t have cool other-market stuff that seems nifty, but they’re not just pissing on the picnic for the hell of it.
This looks like something from the early, on, “80’s. Did you ever figure out how the accidents, one that was a rear ender, all came in one year?
My brother in law, ion’s ago, kept hitting things on his way to work. Was simply not allowing the time to get there.
I was dating someone who had two-three in rather rapid, succession many years ago. (two were a result of him running into other cars)
I suggested that, the individual figure out the issue and get back to me later at more opportune,serene, times.