A few years ago Toyota dropped Daihatsu in New Zealand, which was a good idea at the time.
After all, the funny little subsidiary known for its previously fantastic Kei cars only had the elderly Terios (that was never very good anyway) and the unloved second-gen Materia (That’s sole USP appeared to be lights around the front speakers…), so what the hell, right?
Well now it looks like we may actually regret Daihatsu’s local demise after all, if the new concepts it has unveiled for the Tokyo Auto Salon are anything to go by!
While the newly resurrected Copen got us all excited for Daihatsu again when it launched last year, the tiny 660cc 3-cylinder turbo-packing convertible just got two new versions that really make us want Daihatsu back on out shores – a coupe and and utterly brilliant shooting Brake.
While the coupe takes the retro styling of the Cero version of the Copen, the shooting brake takes the angular, more aggressive front of the original new-generation (follow that?) Copen – now called the Copen Robe – and runs with it, all the way back to a brilliantly abruptly cut off roofline.
The coupe and shooting brake will be joined at the Tokyo Auto Salon by three versions of the Cast hatch and a jacked-up Copen Adventure concept that must be the first time anyone has tried the “jacked-up suspension/black plastic body cladding” thing on a convertible…
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