One You Can't Buy Here, II...

So, you want a sporty, car? How about a turbo, you like those? Of course, lightweight is a great thing, and nimble handling is on the agenda, as well as a great soundtrack. Let's get a little exotic, how about a mid-ship engine placement, and fancy doors? Really cool, make the car tiny so that you can place it on the road with more ease and certainty than anything this side of a motorcycle, and make it a coupe, with a real interior so that all this good stuff can be used to get through traffic in the morning as well as scrapping around mountain roads, all the while getting great fuel mileage...

Too bad, Mazda never brought the Autozam AZ-1 to these shores. It's a real shame too, as along with the slightly more common Honda Beat and Suzuki's Cappuccino the AZ-1 was one of only a few sports cars built to Japan's Kei rules. That fact alone is kind of weird because along with making a great city car, the Kei regulations read like a formula for a tiny sportster in the mold of Abarth-Fiats, and Ginnetta's G15. 660cc is the limit for engines and 63bhp, maximum length is 3.4 meters, width under 1.5. These are tiny cars, and the Mazda is actually smaller than most as it easily comes in under the 2m height limit (the AZ-1's highest point actually sits a fairly minuscule 1150mm from the ground).

Of the three Kei-Sports mentioned the Mazda is by far the most interesting, its mid-engine design, combined with its three-cylinder motor (shared with the Cappuccino) make for an exciting, if noisy drive. The gull-wing doors add a sense of occasion, and can be removed with relative ease to make for a surprisingly open car. In almost all ways the AZ-1 behaves like a miniature exotic, and that includes lack of space, and a general lack of refinement. I can't imagine it's terribly safe, especially if contacted by the average Canyonero-esque soccer-mom convenience, and you'll have to use your pockets for things like phones and pens because the Mazda doesn't have any. The payback is immediate steering and handling, decent acceleration (for a 660cc car) and terrific mileage. The best part is how well the AZ-1 (and by extension the Cappuccino) responds to tuning, with more than one tuner extracting 120bhp from the little three. Mazda themselves produced a few special editions, and several show-cars, including a radical, group-C inspired pseudo-racer.

The AZ-1 also shares an interesting feature with that most famous of small sports cars, the Austin Healy Mk-I sprite. Both cars were originally intended to have pop-up style hidden headlamps, but on both projects the system was discarded on grounds of weight and cost, so both share a somewhat similar wide-eyed expression at the front.

The cars seem to be constantly up for auction online in Japan, and some have made their way to Europe as gray-market cars, but I've only heard of a couple in the U.S., and I have no idea what their owners have done to convince the authorities that the cars should be allowed in the country. It's a shame too as this is just another example of EPA regulations having the inverse of their supposedly intended effect. Having more cars like this on U.S. soil could only be a good thing, and encouraging this level of fuel-economy by giving drivers the ability to have fun at the same time would seem worth bending a few rules. Alas, fun seems never to be a bureaucrat's favored word. More's the pity...