Kei cars are part of the Livetodai mainstay. I bought my first Mira as super cheap to run transport and needed the benefits of it being a two seater delivery van. I’d had a Datsun 1200 ute and had it look “commercial” which let me get away with parking in loading zones. First thing I did when getting the Mria home was…ahh mop the oil off the floor (120km drive home and the crank wore through the rear main seal - npt a drop on the road or drive just the guts on the floor when I came back down with a coffee)…with coffee in hand remove the factory pink and green stripes, pull the engine replace the seal and severely lighten the fly wheel. I had driven in it just under two hours and hated it. It needed to go faster. Not fast as in race others fast, but fast to keep up with the ebb and flow of regular traffic. The second modification was to make it look like a delivery van so I got a heap of DHL satchels, cards. literature and signs from a friend’s Ford Transit. With the benefit of easy parking (I have never been fined for using loading zones) it was keeper. And this was made better with a friend gifting me some magnetic signs “Gold Coast City Council” (it pays to keep it looking clean and the grey bumpers give it the commercial look). It is my short distance car in that when it is going it normally only gets driven within a 20km radius from home. For comp I trailer it. More details on what went on with making it suit my liking (for those new here) are in the thread “not quite track”. Would I do a build like that again, no absolutely not. Once was enough and I learnt a heap and took a considerable amount of my knowledge “beyond” to become understanding. Now the more I know the more I see that I understand so little. Why we each play with a Dai is personal. Some like the cuteness, some it’s affordability, some of us are just too dumb to know better (challenge to make it work accepted) and a host of other reasons. Not withstanding the thought of having a car registered for the road, I would in future, go straight to the radical build rather than incremental modifications. The day I drove a Radical SR3 it dawned on me that was the performance I wanted - light weight, bike powered and if possible aero. So following are a collection of ideas of how to go straight to big performance in little cars, and the purpose of such for me would be for competition in khancross or motokhana (for which a modified “special” class exists in my country - " 'stralia". Probably not mod’s for a car to park in loading zones, but might be cool in comp with a DHL or Aus Post paint job.
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