The Japanese “Kei” car segment has given birth to all sorts of strange and wonderful vehicles over the years, offering a wide range of body styles to cater for a surprisingly large variety of applications. Most are ordinary without any kind of sporting focus to speak of, but there have been a few notable exceptions to the rule. One such exception is the Suzuki Cappuccino and no, it doesn’t look like a cup of coffee. The name makes little to no sense but the car itself follows a sensible sports car recipe, much like the MX-5. It is a front engined, rear-wheel drive roadster that is light and docile behind the wheel. This vibe is clear to see when you take a look it’s soft, cutesy styling.
As I mentioned before, Kei cars may not be big in terms of overall size but they do contain a lot of personality and the Cappuccino is no different. The only hard edge you will find, or rather edges, are on the corners of the windshield. The lights are funny little bubbles that are simple but highly effective in creating that innocent appearance. Never has a car seemed so naive in it’s nature from bumper to bumper. It could very well be happiness in mechanical form because nobody will ever say that it’s ugly or off-putting. Best of all, you don’t even have to be an enthusiast because your own instinct will automatically make the inference about it’s character. Not many cars can do that nowadays.
When you compare a Cappuccino to a current Mazda MX-5, it feels pretty gutless and seemingly ill-fitting of the “sports car” title. 63 horsepower will not offer the same kind of thrill as 130, even if you’re revving the crap out of it. That is one major drawback of a tiny 660cc inline 4 piston engine. However, if we compare this car to others in it’s class, it is very sporty indeed and people have tuned them in many fun and exciting ways. In fact, several have been customised to look like bigger cars such as the Dodge Viper and Chevrolet Corvette. They even race alongside other kei cars in the K4GP – a series that’s well worth a story on it’s own.
Owning such an endearing little machine will always be a novelty no matter how many times you take it out. Pace and performance is something that we have in abundance, in no small part thanks to electric cars. What was once the realm of high-end supercars is now accesible to soo many, but is that all a car is good for? I would argue no and the Cappuccino proves it. Cars may be machines but they are very much capable of illiciting emotional responses in us because we are not machines. We give cars personalities and use metaphors to describe them in a way which subverts the unnatural creation of them. That emotion is what drives someone to pick this vehicle – not acceleration numbers because using that as a metric for measuring overall enjoyment is stupid.
I hope that philosophy lesson hasn’t bored you too much but explaining the mindset is important in a case like this. It is by far the biggest gulf between car people and non-car people, however the Cappuccino bridges that gulf simply because of it’s “mini-me” stature. It is the sort of whimsy which should make a return in modern vehicles because soo many things feel soo depressing now. Cars can and should be fun, so let this pint-sized sports car be a demonstration of what can be done.
