Honda Beat, Suzuki Jimny, Nissan Skyline: The Dopest Cars I Found For Sale Online

No, it wasn’t the Miata in Japan — you’re looking at a true JDM Roadster here. Not even a Mazda Roadster, as it’s listed, this car was instead sold as a Eunos in its home market. All the other kids — Honda, Toyota, Nissan — were making up luxury brands to sell in North America, and Mazda wanted in. So, it made approximately one thousand sub-brands that didn’t survive the ‘90s.

But the cars did, and that’s the important part. Roadsters are still fun as hell, and the yellow lights on this particular one are just a bonus. I’m a sucker for a good yellow headlight, especially on a Miata.

Elf truck! A truck for elves! Whether that means a truck to be driven by elves, or a truck in which one would haul elves, is up for debate — I think this Isuzu’s dump bed would hold Keeblers fine, but typical fantasy elves would likely have no difficulty escaping.

Maybe it was assembled by elves? Sung into being from wood and stone, in the depths of Mirkwood? Probably not. It probably came from an Isuzu factory, like the other non-elf trucks. Elves are probably involved in some other, non-manufacturing capacity.

Oh, you have a HiAce? That’s cool, I guess. No, no, they’re neat little vans — you’ve got room for, what, eight people in there? That’s really neat. I mean, it doesn’t quite match the capacity of this Coaster bus, but I get it. Everyone’s gotta start somewhere.

Could you imagine vanlifing in one of these? You’d have all the room in the world, more usable square footage than my actual New York apartment. Okay, maybe not that much, but it’d be close.

I want a Honda Beat so bad, and yet I am terrified to ever sit in one. I’m scared that I’d plop down in the seat only to find I’m too tall, my legs too long for the tiny little kei convertible. It’s not even the height of my head relative to the roof that concerns me — I just don’t want my legs to wind up inside the steering column.

If you’re shorter than me, though, get yourself a Beat. They’re a longtime favorite of Jalopnik, and for good reason — what’s better than a lightweight, compact, high-revving convertible? Nothing, that’s what.

I’ll admit it — I’m a sucker for drift stitching. The idea of taking a busted bumper and repairing it with whatever you have on hand — a drill and some zip ties, usually — just so you can get back out on track. It’s the kind of repair that views cars as a tool, to be battered and fixed up and used, rather than some Object Of Value to be coveted from afar.

This Mark II is, of course, worth coveting as well. But I covet it because of the stories it’s likely earned over the course of its life. Drift stitching is a form of patina, proof that a car has really lived over its years on this earth. It makes everything better.

C’mon, you didn’t think this list was going to skip over the Jimny, did you? The compact, boxy, two-door off-roader that’s too beautiful, too pure to exist here in the States? Over my dead body would this be omitted from a list of the dopest Japanese cars.

A Jimny, I think, would be a cleaner fit for me than the Beat. It’s just a bigger car, more workable for my grass-fed American six-foot stature and anime-esque leg length. I could make a Jimny work. I should make a Jimny work. Relatedly, does anyone have $9500 laying around that they wouldn’t miss?

The weirdest thing about Japanese vehicles like this or the Coaster bus is the interior. Japan drives on the left, meaning the curb side is the left side of the car — that’s where the entrance is for that bus, and for this RV. The change in door position means the entire interior has to be flipped to accommodate, and you end up with these weirdly backwards vehicles.

If you wander into enough RVs, you get a sense for where things tend to be in them. This one is the total opposite. It’s like walking through an unfamiliar Target, and realizing that the store shifts its X and Y axes from the Target you’re used to — almost a Twilight Zone feeling.

Yes, we got the Mister Two here in the United States. Even this beautiful Turbo model, in hard-to-pull-off-but-when-it-works-it-works white, is something you could grab on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace without having to deal with importers and shipping times. So why, pray tell, would you buy this one?

Because it’s cheap, that’s why. This SW20 Turbo is under $10,000, even including shipping to the United States. Sure, taxes and import costs would likely push you over the edge, but I dare you to find an MR2 Turbo in this condition for this money stateside.

Do you want to be Jason Torchinsky when you grow up? Well, change your dreams, because you can’t really just be another guy. That guy is taken. Jason Torchinsky is already that guy. You can’t really just decide to be a person who already has a family and a car publication. People would probably notice the change, like recasting a beloved actor.

You can grow up to be like Jason, though, by which I mean you can grow up to own a powder-blue Nissan Pao. You can probably work on learning all the tail light stuff too, but that sounds like a lot more work than Pao ownership. Plus, you’d get to own a charming little modern-retro hatchback. What’s better than that?

When I said the Jimny was the compact offroader that we don’t get, that was a miscalculation. There are in fact multiple tiny ‘froaders too good for the U.S., and this Pajero Mini is one of them. OEMs, are you listening? Give us more miniature two-door off-road machines.

Sure, this Pajero Mini may have an auction grade of R, meaning it’s been damaged and may not have been repaired perfectly, but come on. It can show up at your door for under seven grand, and it has a mirror on the fender. Is that not enough to make up for its history?

We should bring back T-tops. I understand that they’re functionally no different from a targa, except more likely to leak on to your center console, but I will not let little things like “facts” get in the way of my new crusade here. I watched Smokey and the Bandit too much at a formative age and I think all cars need T-tops and CB radios.

This Fairlady gets it. Not a 300ZX, mind you, but a Fairlady — the Japanese name for one of the better looking cars of the ‘90s. It’s even emblazoned on the two-tone leather seats, Fairlady Z. Nissan was probably right in reserving that name for its home market, as Americans are too hopped up on red meat and fragile masculinity to own anything called a “lady,” but it’s still just a better name.

The FD RX-7 is, indisputably, one of the best-looking cars of all time. I’d put it leagues above the Jaguar E-Type, right up there with the original S30 Fairlady Z and the Toyota 2000GT. The sleek curves, the proportions, the size — it’s all just perfect.

Of course, if I owned one, I’d probably ruin the clean look by chasing down a Keisuke Takahashi aesthetic. The carbon hood, the RE Amemiya widebody, the enormous GT wing. I just can’t leave well enough alone, I guess.

Silvias just aren’t cheap anywhere, huh? Normally you get a discount for buying from Japan, like that FD on the last slide, but this is right in line with American S14 pricing. I postulate, however, that this is still a better buy — simply for its period-correctness.

The eye through which we view the S-chassis is a modern one. We’re used to seeing them drift stitched up, decades of damage covered up by modern parts and style. This one is pure late nineties — look at that The Fast and The Furious-spec bumper and tell me I’m wrong.

He’s just a little guy!

I am willing to bet that 95 percent of American pickup owners would never fill the bed of this Daihatsu. You can fit so many Blue Bottle coffee cups in that bed, it’s absurd. And even more in the cab!

Oh, you thought I was gonna have an R33 GT-R in here, huh? Maybe even an R34? Incorrect, my friend. It’s Kenmeri time in this bitch. The Kenmeri wasn’t the first high-performing Skyline, that was the Hakosuka, but the Kenmeri modernized the earlier car’s boxier looks.

It’s honestly a tough call, between this and the R34, for which is my favorite Skyline. The R34 is of course ingrained in my memory, a core part of my being, but the Kenmeri is just so sleek. Which of the two do you prefer?