Suzuki Twin Reveal and Build Plans. (I want your suggestions)
In the latest video I teased the latest addition to the tofu garage, my new Suzuki Twin which for now will serve as my grocery getter and daily runabout.
Released in 2003 and only sold for 2 years, there are only around 10,000 of these gems left in existence making it one of the rarest production kei-cars in Japan. It was available in hybrid and non hybrid which means in addition to being the smallest car in Japan at release, it was also the first hybrid kei-car.
In addition to being rare as hell and tiny, when unveiled at the 2020 Tokyo Motor Show as the Suzuki PU3 Commuter, the prototype was very similar except with the notable difference of the sick Jurassic Park safari gunner seat styled pop out seats.
Basically the same thing.
My car doesn't have that, and I'm debating adding it, but honestly given what I'm thinking of doing with this car in the long term I'll probably just remove the passenger seat entirely.
Of course it's not going to be possible for me to own a car and just not modify it so I do have some plans, both short term and then long term.
To begin with I just want to treat this car like a stupid fun little nugget and so I've bought a cheap little steering wheel just to up the cool factor on the interior and get rid of that boring airbag.
If you're wondering if this is genuine, it's not. But that's because the steering wheel that I plan to use in this long term is currently in my car that is supposed to be loaded into a container and shipped over here. The boss kit is genuine since that will be staying on the car.
I'll do a few other small things around the interior, maybe I'll go to some Up Garages or browse Yahoo auctions for some cool seats, but the next immediate thing I'm thinking of is wheels and that's actually where I want your help.
The factory wheel size on the Twin is 4.5Jx13 ET45 but I have seen people run them with wheels as large as 6.5Jx15 ET39 and they still seem to just fit under the guards.
The wheels I've got in mind are TE37s because they're an absolute classic and look good on anything, but also because they release them in 13" and 14" sizes so I should be able to get ones that will work really well for me.
I'm a sucker for the big meaty sidewall look so I'm thinking of going for the smaller wheel - fatter tyre combo like this:
The reason behind the race-inspired cosmetics is because I plan to keep these wheels for the final build phase of this car which is going to kick off either after I get another daily, or when this fails Shaken (vehicle testing), and that is turning it into my competitive car for the Time Attack kei car series:
And so because of this, these wheels need to do 3 things:
1. They must be lightweight and genuine, no knockoffs.
This is pretty obvious, but I feel like it might rule out some of the older wheels I love like the SSR mk 1 - 3. It's also why I'm leaning more towards 13 and 14 rather than 15", as long as it clears the brakes.
2. They must have a variety of tire options for street and race use.
In the past the tyre options have been the limiting factor for what wheels I could run. For this I need a size where I can actually get tyres that fit those thresholds
3. They must look sick and the colour has work with red, white, and or carbon fiber.
So if you have any wheel suggestions you think could look great on the car in it's current form as well as in the future once it's been turned into a time attack machine.
The only wheel that is banned is the BBS LM / Work M1 / Volk 21A or any of those similar LM styled wheels. The reason that wheel is banned is because of my plans for the MR-S that I'll be revealing soon.
For now my inspiration on what I want to do to the car is based on these few images that I stumbled across and were a large part of the reason why I bought this. You can expect this current phase of the build, my road legal street version, to look like any of these.
I'm insanely looking forward to this build and cant wait to get started doing stupid things to it.
I wont go too into detail on the final phase of the build because realistically that's a few years off and so things might end up changing. But current plans are; full carbon fiber body, engine swap, stripped and caged interior, full adjustable suspension etc...
The goal with stage 1 of this build is stupid, cheap, fun. Aka all the cliche things you do when you're a teenager who's just bought your first car and want to modify it but don't have any tools or money, because that's me right now.
Comments (10)
Something like an itasha would make me die laughing, but not a whole lot of space for it!
Haha, I'd thought about itasha in the past but hadn't considered it for this. Maybe like a chibi style or something. Or just go completely the other way and try find the most macho anime like Berserk haha
Is it weird that I wanna see you wrap it to look like an Air Jordan 1? Chicago Bulls red, black and white colorway with a big swoosh down the side? It already looks like a shoe, you’d def stand out at the local car meet up. I’m just spitballing teenager ideas. Love the car.
That's wild, I actually had thought of doing like the Vans swoosh on it but the Air Jordan would be so much better haha
I always find it hard to go past classic Minilite’s for most small/tiny cars.
Surely here in Japan it would have to be Watanabe's. But they are pretty perfect, and the black on black on red that I have now is a good match
I know back here in nz good tyres for 13 inch wheels are reallt cheap. Even more cheaper than 15inch
Yeah typically the smaller the wheel the cheaper, same goes for tires. But there is a point around 15" where there is just so much supply that it gets cheaper.
I think the medium-chunky spokes on the TE37 will suit it best – not in white, though. My first thought about this car’s image is it needs a roof wing, preferably a soft-edged shape on lightweight pedestals . . . and there it is, second pic from the bottom.
Yeah I'd already gone through quite a lot of options in my head before arriving at TE's. I'd love to do the te37v's but I dont think this car would have the dish to pull it off. And yeah, roof wing and some sideskirts and a front lip will be going on pretty shortly after the wheels I think. I had a whole bunch of ideas about the wings, but that white one looks really nice and should still let me open the rear glass to get my groceries in. But, there was also a pretty sick looking one I saw that had one styled after the one on Ken Blocks '08 WRX STI and that looked really sick haha