June 25, 2007: Japanese D.I.Y. cars

[Undertoad]

It's the Monday Neatorama collaboration image!

note: a tragic editing error caused UT to not present this as a Neato collaboration image. He apologizes



Spluch featured this item some time ago (OK, months ago), but it's worth a second look.



Since the image is from Chinese Xinhua.net, we can only reply on Spluch for the explanation:

Mitsuoka Motor, a Japanese company, has just unveiled a micro kit car "K-4", equipped with a 50cc engine on its classical tested sports car body, developed for the do-it-yourself customers in Tokyo. It is composed of more than 500 parts and takes approximately 40 hours to assemble. The Kit-Car measures just under 2.5 meters (eight feet) long and can run at up to 50 kilometers (31 miles) an hour. The expected cost of each of this vehicle is US $6,460.

31 MPH? Well this one isn't going to attract much attention in the US, but in areas where transportation is a little less available, maybe this can be shipped around to provide a cheaper alternative. Someone (can't remember who, it was a news report over the weekend) is building cheaper, sub-$5000 cars for India.

On the other hand, if the price of gas is $5/gal then the price of the vehicle is less of the overall cost of transportation.

Be sure to check out our friends at Neatorama for more neato items all the time!