Remember the days of "Japanese imports", when the Civic and Accord actually came from the land of the rising sun and not some factory in Ohio? The owner manuals were unfathomable and you couldn't read the buttons either.
To a large extent, we're glad those days are gone, but once in a while we get the temptation of actually owning a JDM product, something Uncle Sam doesn't want to homologate. That's the case of the Honda Vezel, a pretty interesting car that's currently only available in Japan. There, this is classed as a compact SUV, but in America it would be a subcompact.
The Vezel is derived from the all-new Fit, the one they revealed in Detroit a month ago. It supposedly has the roof of a coupe and an impressively large boot for its class. Not impressed yet? How about full-LED headlights and a hybrid powertrain that allows you to drive in pure-EV mode. Your average Toyota Prius can't do that! What's more, Honda has developed a brand new double-clutch gearbox for the car.
These are all things that we love about the little Vezel and hopefully you guys will start to appreciate it as well after checking out the videos below.
There's long been talk of a Fit-SUV being built in Mexico for North America and Yoshiharu Itai, the Vezel’s chief engineer, has revealed European sales are a certainty. Let's just hope none of the cool toys "fall off" the car during the import procedure.
Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida. Full profile
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