The Mitsubishi Minicab is great in its smallness – In the Wild

Kei cars usually receive the approval of the AutoWeek news editors, so we are happy to highlight this Mitsubishi Minicab shared on our forum. It fits beautifully into the list of recently spotted small Japanese vans, consisting of the Subaru E-Wagon, Honda Acty Street and Daihatsu Hijet. It has something important in common with the first of those three, because this Minicab is also four-wheel drive!

This is not just any Minicab, but a real 4WD with the 52 hp 657 cc three-cylinder engine with five valves per cylinder. Not the crème de la crème – after all, you also had a blown version of that engine a little later, good for 64 hp – but it was a lot stronger than the model with a carburetor (39 hp). Modest, nevertheless, because the Minicab had to comply with Kei regulations to be fiscally attractive. These also dictated its size: the Minicab is only a scant 3.30 m long and just under 1.40 m wide. With its modest size, it mainly resembles the aforementioned Honda Acty Street.

The Mitsubishi Minicab was also available as a pick-up and may be more familiar to you, because it looked quite similar to the Daihatsu Hijet pick-up that was often used in the Netherlands by public garden services, among others. However, the Minicab passed us by and so this 1991 copy only came to the Netherlands at a later age. In fact, at a very late age. Last summer Dutch records were released for the first time! Nice that someone made the effort to enter it. There is undoubtedly a hobby behind it.