I don’t know if those little tires can handle muddy, unpaved country roads like a tractor can.
The long travel side-by-sides, on the other hand, are pretty incredible offroad.
Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks
21–30 of 651 posts
Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks
#22We've been importing them to Louisiana for 20+ years now. Although for the longest time they were only legal to drive like a farm truck (up to 40 miles from the farm) and only on 55mph or less roads. They also had limiters installed so they couldn't go over 55mph, not that its hard to remove the tiny flap of metal they installed to keep the throttle from opening fully.
There is one farmer we used to call the used kei truck salesman because at any given time he has 10-20 of these in his yard for sale fresh off the import boat.
Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks
#23I can see the utility but most country road speed limits are gonna be 50 mph+. I wouldn’t want to drive it there. Dirt roads or on your land, sure. Regardless, they look pretty cool. A cheaper option, but lower quality, might be some small trucks from China. It will also be interesting to see how Fords Maverick catches on. May not quite fill this niche but seems like a good option overall.
Hi, I live in the boonies, and own one of these minitrucks. a) They do 60mph ok if you have a four-speed one. Five-speed ones will do 70 just fine. b) country roads are generally 45 in most states. c) chinese minitrucks have a hell of a lot less support for about the same price. d) Ford mavericks are DOA here. If you want a work van you buy a work van.
Can you expand on what you mean by DOA in this context?
Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks
#24New minitrucks should be legal here! If you don't need a huge truck, you should be able to buy something smaller.
You do see new minitrucks in certain non-road settings in the US, but yeah, they aren't street legal. Some folks import them for use as UTVs: https://usminitrucksales.com
It's the same somewhat bizarre logic that makes it fine to register say, a 1969 VW Beetle in the US, but not a 2004 Mexican Beetle that's no less clean or safe. The older stuff gets grandfathered in because at that age there's hardly anyone willing to bother. But if new minitrucks were road legal, they'd be everywhere, and there might be an epidemic of minitruck highway deaths, etc.
Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks
#25I can see the utility but most country road speed limits are gonna be 50 mph+. I wouldn’t want to drive it there. Dirt roads or on your land, sure. Regardless, they look pretty cool. A cheaper option, but lower quality, might be some small trucks from China. It will also be interesting to see how Fords Maverick catches on. May not quite fill this niche but seems like a good option overall.
Hi, I live in the boonies, and own one of these minitrucks. a) They do 60mph ok if you have a four-speed one. Five-speed ones will do 70 just fine. b) country roads are generally 45 in most states. c) chinese minitrucks have a hell of a lot less support for about the same price. d) Ford mavericks are DOA here. If you want a work van you buy a work van.
What state do you live in that rural roads are 45? On the entire west coast they’re at least 55 and the average speed is more realistically in the mid 60s. I think in some of the south west states the speed limit on 2 lane rural roads is more like 70mph
Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks
#26I can see the utility but most country road speed limits are gonna be 50 mph+. I wouldn’t want to drive it there. Dirt roads or on your land, sure. Regardless, they look pretty cool. A cheaper option, but lower quality, might be some small trucks from China. It will also be interesting to see how Fords Maverick catches on. May not quite fill this niche but seems like a good option overall.
Hi, I live in the boonies, and own one of these minitrucks. a) They do 60mph ok if you have a four-speed one. Five-speed ones will do 70 just fine. b) country roads are generally 45 in most states. c) chinese minitrucks have a hell of a lot less support for about the same price. d) Ford mavericks are DOA here. If you want a work van you buy a work van.
is the Maverick DOA? I see the all over my rural farm area and people are paying $8000 over sticker for the privilege of getting one of the few in stock.
Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks
#27> And unlike a side-by-side, it can also be driven legally on local roads Side by sides can, with a few accessories (horn, license plate lights, turn signals, etc), be driven legally on roads. Most dealers are happy to sell and attach these high profit items for you.
If you're talking about the US, state laws vary widely: https://outdoortroop.com/in-what-states-are-side-by-sides-st...
Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks
#28I've seriously contemplated getting one of these. Street legal, fuel efficient, simple, but when I started researching them I started to see a pattern. It's hard to find anyone in rural areas willing to work on them and not all mini trucks are equal. Some are not shipped correctly and have frame rust issues. There are YouTuber's that cover some of the models and the gotchas and things to inspect. I would never buy on…
SXS are overpriced and underdeliver compared to what you can get from a minitruck.
Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks
#29The 25-year import rule here, which bans Americans from importing vehicles from other countries unless they're 25+ years old, is just awful for those of us who would be interested in driving small, efficient foreign cars.
It would be great to live completely car-free, but absent major changes to how we plan our cities, it's just a sad reality that cars are a necessary ingredient to life in the vast majority of America. To cope with this, I'd love to be able to import a kei car or van from Japan, or micro-sized European city cars, or even some of the very small EV city cars that we see in China... but I just can't, unless I want an overpriced pile of scrap from the 1990s.
It's all so much worse when you realize that the 25-year rule is a holdover from a grey-market import scare of the mid-1980s[0]: European carmakers, namely Mercedes, BMW, and Porsche, were having trouble in the US with people importing European models of their cars. There were some valid concerns around inconsistent modifications for US safety standards, but the main issue was clearly that these grey-market imports were cheaper than buying a US model from a dealer, so profits were being missed. Instead of fixing the pricing discrepancy, they just successfully lobbied the government to enact this draconian 25-year ban, and so to this day I can't have a 2020s Japanese kei car shipped to a US port at my expense because it'd be illegal to register it.
[0] https://jalopnik.com/the-25-year-import-rules-history-is-mor...
Re: Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks
#30[flagged]
it's easy to throw rocks when you personally don't have 3-4 kids.
So what did people do when they had 3-4 kids in the 80s? I see families of 4 with huge SUVs these days.
If anything they want a kei van right? It maximises the size of the vehicle, cuboid on wheels, and minimises the cost for that volume.