As small as it is popular
Not every car market is the same, so AutoWeek likes to peek across the border to see what’s going on there. This time we head to Japan to take a closer look at the country’s best-selling car. That is a completely unknown car here.
In the Netherlands, the Peugeot 208 was by far the most popular car of 2022. The Peugeot 208 is also for sale in Japan, but it is certainly not the best-selling model there. That is a car that we do not know at all in the Netherlands. In fact, the model is not even sold outside Japan. We are talking about the angular and small Honda N-Box.
Anyone who has been closely following the news on AutoWeek.nl has undoubtedly seen Honda’s N-Box pass by one or more times. We wrote about the first generation, about its ‘coupé version’ and about the second generation presented in 2017 and facelifted in 2020. The Honda N-Box is an excellent example of a kei-car: it measures just under 3.4 meters in length and has a 658 cc small three-cylinder under the hood that is available both without and with a turbo. More typical kei-car ingredients: it’s also available with four-wheel drive!
Honda N-Box, also as a ‘tough’ Custom (right).
Cars that fall into the kei class enjoy tax benefits and can be insured for less enormous amounts, so it is not surprising that such kei cars can count on quite a bit of clientele. Honda notices this in particular. The Honda N-Box found no fewer than 202,197 new owners in Japan last year, making it not only the best-selling kei car, but also the best-selling passenger car in the country. That is a lot and also considerably more than the 188,940 units that were sold in 2021. Still, N-Box sales are not yet at pre-coronavirus levels. In 2019, Honda sold no fewer than 253,500 units of the N-Box.
Honda N-Box inside: a cozy place.
The Honda N-Box has been immensely popular for years. It was already the best-selling kei car in its first full year of sales (2012) and it has only had to miss that title once until 2022. From 2017 to 2020, the N-Box was also Japan’s best-selling car. In total, Honda has already sold 2,301,195 N-Boxes. Incidentally, the N-Box is not Honda’s only kei-car. It sells, among other things, the N-WGN, the N-VAN, the N-One and until recently also the playful S660.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl