Look At This Fantastic Suzuki Carry That Showed Up At My Place

So this weekend I was trying to do some work on my Nissan Pao – I’ll write more on that in a few, there’s some exciting tales of frustration there – and my friend Attila came by to drop off a tool he hoped would help. The tool ended up not working, but Attila showed up at my house with his friend Steven, who drove a fantastic Suzuki Carry kei truck I think you should see.

North Carolina is by no means perfect, but as a state it does have two crucial advantages: it’s one of the only and largest native homes to Venus Fly Traps and the state is remarkably welcoming to kei-class vehicles. That means not only do we have plants that eat bugs, slowly, but there’s also a good number of fantastic little kei vehicles buzzing around the streets. Like the one Steven has.

This Suzuki Carry is a 1999 one, the year they grew a little bit in size and, as a result, have a genuinely useful pick-up bed, but as you can probably tell, the point of this little truck is more fun than work.

You can get a lot of details about the Carry’s build on Steven’s YouTube page, which gives plenty of details about this build as well as his other remarkable cars, including a Jimny, a Suzuki Alto Walkthrough, and even an old ’74 Super Beetle.

But let’s just talk for a moment about this Carry, because that’s the one I got to actually see in person and briefly drive. The whole everything of this little truck sort of encapsulates what I really enjoy about kei cars: they just don’t take themselves too seriously. This buys the owner a lot of freedom to pretty much just do whatever seems fun, and the result is a car that’s genuinely fun as a result.

The platform of the kei trucks specifically is also a big factor here, as they’re sort of blank canvases, often painted Workhorse White and being quite simple stylistically: 2/3rds of the body being a long bed, the remaining third a little angular pod to sit in, and that’s pretty much it. But such a simple starting point allows for all sorts of interesting opportunities, some of which come from pre-made body kits, some from scratch-made bits, and, most likely some combination of everything.

Steven’s Carry is definitely the latter; it started life as a normal, hardworking little truck, but now features a modified Japanese-market body kit that gives it those wonderful and hilarious Testarossa-style strakes along the sides, a bumper from a Suzuki Every kei van, those wheels with their menacing spikes, and a lot of other fun details.

Perhaps the biggest fun detail is this incredible little motorcycle that’s strapped into the bed, a Suzuki EPO 50cc bike, a charming tiny bike with wheels like big wheelbarrow wheels that was only sold in Japan and, oddly, Finland. Some seem to have been sold in Sweden, too, but that’s pretty much it. It’s a perfect fit for its sibling Suzuki’s bed, though, and is, I’m told, a blast to ride. It must feel kind of like riding an extremely fast motorized Kik-Step.

Clever touches are all over this thing; take the badging, for example. Steven and his wife made all the badging with a 3D printer and a Cricut decal-cutting machine, and it all looks fantastic, with its exuberant script typography:

The rear decals work really well, too; this is not the sort of typography that Suzuki ever used on these, but I think it absolutely works in this context:

I also need to take a moment to appreciate these taillights, which are fun LED units that have sequential indicators:

Also clever is Steven’s repurposing of Chrysler Stow-N-Go middle-section bench seats for the cab; they take up very little room, but are quite comfortable in the limited confines of a kei truck cab, where they sit as upright as Pentacostal church pews:

This little Carry isn’t all show and no go, though. That rhymed oddly, but my point is that it’s genuinely quick and fun to drive. There’s a turbo added to the 660cc three-banger, and Steven estimates the power is up from the usual 64 to about 80 to 90 horsepower or so. It sure felt quick when I drove it, and I was told it maintains modern highway speeds with no problem.

I really appreciate builds and projects like these. They’re everything that I want people to get out of their cars: a mix of practicality and fun, a kind of unselfconscious enjoyment of something just because it’s faintly absurd, but at the same time makes absolute sense.

Anyway, thanks for driving out to deliver a tool, Steven and Attila, and thanks for showing me this fantastic little truck.

Photos and top graphic: Jason Torchinsky