Hey, welcome to Dan Week. Today we're talking about LMG Whips and today I've got my great value brand Miata.
It's actually a 1993 Suzuki Cappuccino. I just got it in imported directly from Japan.
So it's a K-Series car, which is a Japanese special of absolutely teeny tiny little cars.
It's part of the ABC, so you've got the AutoZam AZ1, you've got the Honda Beat,
and then you've got the Suzuki Cappuccino. It's a two-door rear wheel drive,
with a 660cc three-cylinder turbocharged little engine in the front somewhere,
if you can barely see it. I've had it for a few months now. I bought it kind of sight unseen.
When you buy an international auction, you only get like two pictures, and thankfully I really
lucked out with this one. It's got aftermarket exhaust, aftermarket RSR lowering shocks,
aftermarket Kendra radial tires, an aftermarket turbo blow-off valve, short shifting kit,
aftermarket seats, floor mats, steering wheel. It has a roll cage installed. It runs totally fine.
So yeah, 1993, it's about 30 years old, 31 now I guess, and it has about 150,000 K on it, which is
pretty good. Yeah. I think everyone's question is, why is it, why do you think it's a small car?
I don't know. Have you ever seen that Simpsons episode where the guys are like, oh, this is the biggest car that I could afford. I only barely fit. I think about six-foot-two.
I'm six-foot-two. Doug DeMiro did a little video on it. He's about six-foot-four. He fit. I knew
I'd fit. It's actually pretty okay. I mean, the seats all the way back, but at least then I don't
have to remember where it is, you know? We want to see you in it. You want to see me try and get in it?
I think that'll be fun. So there's a bit of a technique that I have to do. So here's first leg
and then we go in like this and then I got to stay about halfway up the seat so I can get my other
leg in and then down. Yeah, it's quite comfy. There we go. Yeah, aftermarket boost gauge,
which is kind of nice. It's also got aftermarket HID headlights. I had to do a little mod because
in Canada at least you have to have daytime running lights and so that went kind of well.
I'll talk about that a bit more when we get into the engine, but do you want to hear it?
Yeah. All right. Oh, it also talks. I forgot about that.
It talks? Yeah, it's got the automatic toll road system that they have in Japan.
Oh, turbo timer as well. Keep the engine on. Kind of nice.
Refs to 8,000 RPM because it's a teeny tiny little motor. Pretty cool.
One of the other cool things it has is it's a three-piece hardtop convertible
and it's a nice sunny day. So why don't we take that off? You can give me a hand in a minute here.
Mr. Sammy. Yeah, I'll show you. And then we flip that this way as well. There we go. Oh yeah,
getting out is fun. You want to see that? It takes a bit of practice, but I have got reasonably
graceful at it. And then each of the roof panels come off individually
like that. They're made of aluminum. They're super, super, super light.
And they fit in the absolutely hilarious trunk. I don't think you're prepared for this. There you go.
That's how big the trunk is. I'm pretty sure that the trunk is designed only to fit the roof panels. And I haven't quite figured
out the perfect way to get them in there yet. There we go. So there's one. It's about the
size of the roof panel. Okay, there's number two. See if I can get that in here. It's supposed to come
with a little bag, but I didn't get the bag, I guess. That's whatever. There we go. There's two.
Trunk's almost gone. This is probably my favorite configuration. I think this is called a target top
where you just have the center. Makes it a little more open. It's kind of got a bit of shade in there.
I like it. It's kind of cool. And then you can take this one out too. I think that's in the middle
here. And I'm pretty sure that the three piece was done as a necessity instead of a cool,
but just the fact that they attempted a convertible at all is pretty neat. There we go.
There we go. So now we're in full hard top convertible. Will this one fit? I don't know.
Yeah, there you go. So there, they fit that. Only got one key. Better make sure I got that.
And the final piece to come down is the entire rear windscreen. There's a little latch right there.
Ah, there you go. There's a latch there. And then lastly, I think it's this. You've got to push that
in. And then this comes up. And then this whole thing folds down. So now it's a full convertible
convertible. I think so. Yeah. Alcantara. And look, the trunk holds all of the roof pieces.
And that's it. That's all. Last thing, I guess, is the engine. The release for it's in the glove
compartment. You're going to see this if you haven't already, Alex. I don't know what I'm looking at.
Engine. Engine. Again, this is the 660 cc three cylinder turbo charge. A little tiny, tiny thing.
It's like a nook. It's like a grandmother's laptop that somebody put like a D brand skin on.
Basically, there's a lot of aftermarket stuff on this. I think it's got the aftermarket blow-off
valve. I haven't been able to find the turbo because it's about this big. I believe it's
underneath the engine looking at some of the diagrams there. These two boxes here for the
aftermarket HID headlights. And because in Canada, we have to have daytime running lights,
I needed to do a mod for them. My first attempt, I went straight into the 12 volt line for the
entire car. And that meant that if the lights were on, it controlled the entire ignition system.
And so the car wouldn't shut off if I had the lights on. I ended up putting a diode in there,
which prevents the backfill to the rest of the system. And that's got some like heat sink compound,
and it's just abstract to the like the frame. I don't know, kind of works. I think I found your
turbo. Oh, you did? Yeah, it should be right down there. It's right here. Yep. So cute. Isn't that
tiny? It's about that big. There's no turbo lag because it doesn't have anything to spin up.
It makes some good noises though. And then an aftermarket breather as well,
just gives that tiny turbo another sip of air. And the original battery died. So I just put a
tractor battery in it because they're the same size. And an original Cappuccino battery from
Japan costs like $300. So it's a tractor. And then I had an SAE approved wood block to hold it in
in place. There's two prices that you kind of have to worry about when you're importing a car
from Japan. The first one is the price of the car. And the second one is getting here landed.
So this car from Japan cost me $6,000. Canadian. And getting it landed to my door was $9,300 total.
So about three grand in import. But that pays for, you know, transport. That's the shipping.
That's the inspections. That's everything. It's got AC. So that costs $100 in like AC charge.
And then you're paying dock fee and then transport to my house and then everything. So to my door,
delivered to my door, $9,300. Not bad for a car that seems to work pretty good.
We can blame Ariana for this. She's done about five. She drives the right hand drive Lexus right
now that I think costs like no money as well. And the thing is that the Cappuccino is a reasonably
rare car. It's also one of the only cars I've seen that kind of was like cool and attractive.
Like I want a Datsun 240Z, but like those are $40,000 rusted out with no motor or anything.
I actually learned stick on this car. I've only had it for like a few weeks now, maybe months. So
there, told you the talks. I've only had it for a few weeks now. So let's see if we can get there
without dying. Buy a blue. You can fit two people in this thing? Barely. All right, you ready?
I'm ready. Am I? I don't know.
You see a belt on? Yes.
Oh yeah, it's very lowered. I've got some new shocks that are coming in.
They should be here in a month or so. They're being built. Not many people make a,
you know, coilover for a Suzuki Cappuccino.
Oh my God. We're going like 50K right now. 50 to 60. This is 60K. We're doing the speed limit.
Oh my God. What the f**k?
What comes up to my waist?
Right there. It's a bellybutton height. It's a small car. It is a small car. It's four and a half feet
wide or something like that. 49 or something inches tall. Like, oh my God. It's so tiny. So
weirdo. So cute. So what are your plans with the car? Like any of your plans? Yes, I do.
I'm going to Hayabusa Swap It. So right now, this car makes 66 horsepower and weighs around 1500
pounds. And if I Hayabusa Swap It, it will make around 350 horsepower, which will be terrifying,
because this is a rear wheel drive car that comes with some caveats, though. Motorcycles don't
technically have reverse gear. So I need to buy a limited slip rear differential that has a mechanical
reversing like lever. So I'd have a big piece of string in the cabin. I'll just go reverse.
Just to flip the wheels around. My kind of main goal was to do a sequential. Now,
if I were to case swap this, I would have to spend about 10 grand US on a sequential transmission.
And that's kind of dumb. So what I can do is I can go for a motorcycle engine like a Hayabusa
that comes with a sequential transmission built in. The main problem then is how am I going to get
the like knobby things to do the shifting. So that will also come with an aftermarket pneumatic
paddle shifting system, which will be able to do clutchless shifting, which will be a whole thing,
I guess. And then because I don't really want to be worrying about the clutch when I'm going into
neutral to first can also get a radix clutch for the Hayabusa specifically, which is a kind of
magical slipping clutch type thing at low RPMs and low speeds. It will slip very similar to an
automatic, but it's technically a full clutch plate, right? I prefer kind of superchargers over
turbo. There are some mods that you can do for the Hayabusa engine, including superchargers. So
if I do go that route, which will probably be another three or four grand for this one particular
component, it should be able to push around 450 horsepower. This also probably means that
if I'm at a traffic light and I just ever so gently touch the throttle, the back tires will
break away and I'll immediately die. So that will also need to include a full four corner
ABS system with traction control through a central computer as well. My other big plan as well
for centralized control, you know how in a Tesla, they've got like the big center screen. I wanted
the car to be controlled with something similar to that. If I'm doing map tuning or anything like
that, that can be in the center screen at all times. You don't have to have like a secondary
laptop or anything like that. It also allows me to adjust things for maybe comfort or more track
things. I don't know if I'm going to be doing a full active suspension because that probably cost
more than my life. I'm not entirely sure how I would do that. Probably some sort of single board
solid state computer, latte panda, raspberry pi, something like that. Just to kind of give that
screen, maybe a touch screen. I don't know if that's overkill. Maybe one of those like Kensington
ball mice that I could glue to the window or something like that. But I think that's quite
far off. Hayabusa engine is about four grand. The limited slip rear differential is about four
grand. The pneumatic shifting system is about four grand. And then all of the work and labor
that's going to go into mounting that. Thankfully, we just got a really high end, like professional
grade laser scanner. So I can just do the engine bay, cat it up and then pretend. You know, I say
it's easy, but it's probably not going to be. How long do you think it's going to take for all that?
The most difficult thing is going to be spending the money because kind of once you start, you
can't stop because I mean, you get a power plant and you can't use that because you don't have any
like control systems for it. And then you have to kind of buy the limited slip rear differential
or make a converting kind of box that goes in the way of the drive shaft that reverses the drive
shaft direction. It's probably going to be a ways off. I think, I think it'll be a ways off.
Most of the mods that I was going to do this originally were already done, like the rollcage
was done and the blow off valve was done and the breather was done. The aftermarket exhaust is cool.
The only thing I have to do is replace these RSR lowering springs because it bottoms out in five
seconds. Yeah, I don't know. It's, it's, it came together for less money than I thought I was going
to have to spend on it. And because Japan doesn't sell their roads and nobody really drives,
no rust, about 150, 130K for six grand plus import. Not bad. It's not bad. I got to drive Linus home
on Friday when that was kind of a, that was a trip. We'll see what he thinks about that.
I think you've made a horrible mistake. I don't know. You've got my car. This is clearly my sized.
I'm reverse compensating. Damn, dude. Who do you think you are, Drake?
Now I have to confess, we cheated a little bit. Dan actually drove me home after Wansho last week
and I got a chance to ride in it. It is absolutely f***ing gutless, which is hilarious to me because
this car probably has the highest ratio of coolness to actual real world performance that I think I
have ever seen. Like you think a Miata is something? No, man. This is the ultimate cool car that has
absolutely nothing where it counts. Three cylinders, baby. Oh yeah. Man, if I could do Alex's, like,
I can't do it either. Snap, snap thing, man. Okay, but here's what I want to know because it's right
hand drive, right? And so Dan wouldn't let me drive it last time, but can I, can I try? I have,
let's go. I have never driven right hand drive before, but he says that the gearbox is all the
same and the pedals are in the same spot, so theoretically I should be able to do this. Now
I'm not going to go far. Oh my god, I feel like I am sticking out of the car, sir. I love it with
the Targa. It's good, huh? Oh, that's hilarious. So you still put the key in on the right side.
Everything is identical, only the stick is over here. Do mine as well, yeah. Well, yeah, I mean,
right, we're going to, if we're going to die in the accident, we might as well die sooner. It's
kind of a roll cage for you to get brain damage on. As you said, yeah. You know your head's above
the roll cage, right? I think Dan's head is going to protect the chrome finish on this. Yeah, it
won't get scratched up. Don't get blood on the leather. Got the carbon fiber shifting on. Yeah.
Okay, whoever owned this thing, good taste. We got the e-brake on here. Am I even in gear?
Yep. It's a big clutch point is all the way up there. Wow. Yeah, you got to give her. You got
to really get out there. Okay, okay. Oh, hey, I mean, who needs power steering, right? When you're
driving a go kart. Yes, exactly. He just turned the wheels a little bit. You know what's funny
is the vehicle that this reminds me of most is actually the little Suzuki Swift that my family
had when I was a teenager. Yeah. I think it was a 1990 or a 1991. You know the little one,
the Geometro, the Firefly. Hey, get your performance engine out of here. Okay, we only need three
cylinders. Look at these guys. I feel insecure. Did you talk about how it has a turbo? I did,
yeah. Did you show them how big it is? We tried to find it. It's about that big. I said there's
no turbo lag because it has nothing to spin up. The world's smallest turbo. Yeah. I like the steering
wheel though. Steering wheel is nice. Momo Italy. It's very nice. Yeah. God, you cannot just dry
steer this thing. No, and the wheels rub as well because it's lowered. So you can't even get a
proper turning radius on it yet. Once I get the shocks in, it'll be better. Okay, this car being
lowered. Turbo timer. This car being lowered is absolutely hilarious because it's already so low
that driving around on the road, like, you know how you drive in a normal car, right? And you
pull up beside a semi truck and you're like, whoa, you pull up beside a freaking Honda Civic and
you're like, hi there. Andy's car is like, we're looking up to the hood. It's terrifying. Check this
out, Sammy. Look how far my butt is off the ground. So what's crazy is that between the
between the wine of the turbo and between how low you are to the ground and how sort of hard the car
seems to be working, you can be going like 90 kilometers an hour and you feel like you are
flying. Like seriously, okay, look at this.
That is barely any, I could actually drive the car from the concrete.
I love this thing. It's so cute. It's just hilarious. I pull, I pull up home and I see it next to my
Mercedes and I just giggle every single time. It's so small. I don't know if I showed you
because I got the panels in the trunk now, right? Oh my God. So there's like three-piece convertible,
right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the trunk is, he's going to die. It's only, only panels.
So you guys, if you ever see Dan driving the Mercedes, you know it's because he needed to move
a body. Otherwise he would have, otherwise he would have, what does this thing even called?
Cappuccino. Otherwise he would have taken the Cappuccino. Bring out the Cappuccino.
Well, we couldn't, we got two LTT Store.com backpacks in here. We did. That was it. That's
all that fits in the trunk. On the way home because it's not like there's a back seat to throw them
in. Does it use like standard tires? Like what's the radius? No, so these are actually, these are
15 inch. They're aftermarket as well. These are 15 inch tires. Gary told me that you can't get these
in North America. They're directional. They're really nice. I don't know too much about them,
but these are definitely aftermarket. They rub on the front. I'm hoping that when I
get this a little bit higher off the ground, they, you know, clear the fenders.
Neat. Yes. Well, you let me know if you need a paint job, all right? I certainly will. I think
it's been done badly. Oh yeah. No, this does have an aftermarket paint job on it already.
So the good news is that, that means that we can't actually really like screw it up any worse.
Yes. Wait, no, it's not because it, oh, let me just trap your finger in there. It is original
color, but they touched up this panel and you can see the tape lines here. Are you sure that
it's not a white car that they painted red? Cause this did come red as standard.
Yes. You look right here. So there's definitely some touch up here because they got paint on this
trim piece, right? But if you look in here, like there's no, nobody does, nobody does an
after the fact paint job and like gets in here with it. So this is a red car. Okay. And oh,
here, here, here, here, here. This too. So you can always tell if you, if you get down to metal,
right? Then I'm so sorry. I'm going to do this. That's okay. It needs a new one anyway. You can
see there's the primer, right? And there's the red. There's no extra layers there. Yeah. So this was
red, but they've done some questionable, um, adjustment work on it. Yeah. Yeah. I love the
tail lights. Yeah. A little like bug-eyed, friggin' tail lights. And it has one reverse light. I
also love that they look so comically large because there's, I don't know this for a fact,
but I'm guessing there's probably regulatory requirements for the size of your indicators
and all of that. Most likely. And probably they don't scale with the size of the car.
So you end up with these gigantic signals and, uh, and brake lights. Love it. Did you feel the
roof panel? Which does it weigh? Oh my God. They're aluminum. The hood's aluminum. Again, the car only
weighs about 1,500 pounds total. That's terrifying. Just don't die. I can't really speed in it.
This is true. I heard a, I heard a great quote about the Cappuccino is that it's more fun to drive
than like, you know, a Lamborghini or anything like that. Cause you're driving around town
and you get to shift five times, whereas they barely get out of first.
You'll also get more looks in this, I bet. Yeah. They're apparently pretty rare as well.
I guarantee you, you will get looks in this thing. If you haven't told, I'm sure you get looks.
Maybe. I don't know. Cause you're, you're probably busy. He's never driven stick before.
This is, I've been learning on this. Yeah. So like, man, I was sitting in the passenger seat,
dude, you're getting looks. You're probably just so focused on like, oh my God. Oh my God, there's
this stuff like, I'm right, I'm right side drive. Yeah. I'm learning to drive right side drive and
stick at the same time. So you're probably just not noticing it. You will notice it. Okay.
This thing is so cute. That's scary. Man, we could do it, man. Oh man, I'm just looking at this,
going like, man, like a bubblegum pink or something like that. Something, something. The thing is that
when I got this, I thought it would just be like a cute little car for me. I didn't realize that it
would probably get looks. And I don't know how I feel about that as much anymore. Oh, what? Yeah,
it's gonna get looks. Yeah, that's okay. This, this is a car that says something. It says something
about the occupant. What it says, I don't know, but it definitely says something. Unhinged. And cut.
Hope you've been enjoying Dan week. Thanks for checking out my whip. If you want to see some more,
there's other whips like I think one by Jonathan and some others. And there's always lots of float
plane exclusives on the way. Hopefully, Sammy and I make it back to the other office. Thanks for
subscribing to Floatplane. Yeah, we're going to just die.