My $260 Honda Is Finally Here From Japan And It’s Even Cooler Than I Expected

Back in March, I parted ways with about $3,000 to purchase and ship a tiny 1997 Honda Life that I won for only $258 in Japanese auctions. Now it’s finally home and this car is even cooler than I expected. Everyone loves to buy the Japanese market legends, but you shouldn’t sleep on Japan’s regular cars, either. Here’s how cool of a car you can get for basically pennies on the dollar.

This Honda Life now marks the third time I’ve imported a car from Japan. My first import was a 1991 Honda Beat that I imported in the spring of 2021. Then I imported a 1989 Suzuki Every in the summer of the same year. I’ve learned a lot about importing cars since then. Now I know how to pick better cars so I don’t end up with rusty and Bondo-filled cars. Just this month, I picked up a 1998 MGF in Japan, which is due to arrive at the end of July. I also just sold my Honda Beat, which may shock some, but the reason is pretty simple: My Beat was, well, a beater. Now I want to buy a better one.

So, my fleet is going through a lot of changes, and today I want to welcome my latest addition. I went through a living nightmare in getting this car home. Now that it’s behind me, I can finally enjoy my motorized loot. What I didn’t expect was just how much I’d fall in love with this rare, forgotten piece of Japanese Kei car history.

Once An Important Car For Honda

The Honda Life’s story begins in the 1960s and 1970s with the Honda NIII360 (below).

An American might know that car better as a variant of the N360, the tiny car that Soichiro Honda envisioned to be a Japanese people’s car. Honda says the N360 went on to become Japan’s best-selling Kei-class car, in part because it was so family-friendly and also due to its relatively high performance for the class and era. The N360 was so hot that it took only two months after launch for it to overtake the Subaru 360 in sales.

However, Honda notes that the rise of the personal car in Japan came at a great expense to air quality. Honda considered this when it began development on a replacement for the N360. The firm’s next Kei family car would be designed to give a family as much comfort in their tiny car as they would have if they bought a larger 1-liter car. This car would also help curb pollution through the use of a new, water-cooled engine.

The Honda EA engine of the car that would become known as the Life was a 356cc two-cylinder, single overhead cam design with a hemispherical combustion chamber, plus a crossflow independent port intake and exhaust system. Honda also gave this engine a timing belt — the first production engine with a timing belt in Japan — which offered buyers a quieter engine and easier maintenance. [Odd that anyone would say a timing belt is easier maintenance than a chain, but maybe the early overhead cam motors were eating chains. Heck, even some modern OHC engines struggle. -DT].  The timing belt had a replacement interval of about every 50,000 miles, which Honda said made the engine more reliable than the competition back then.

Launched in 1971, the original Honda Life was a step forward for Honda. The water-cooled engine proved to be so popular and so reliable that Honda put a water-cooled mill in the Honda Z in the same year and then in the new 1300 in 1972. Meanwhile, the Honda Life’s body was an advancement for Keis. Honda also sold the Life as a wagon, step-van, and as a pickup truck.

The Life sold for a few years before it came to a screeching halt in late 1974. It was in that year when, due to changing Kei class and emissions regulations, Honda pulled out of making Kei cars. The Honda Kei drought would then continue for a decade until the launch of the 1985 Honda Today.

A New Life

The Life did not get a proper successor until 1997, when Honda introduced a new Kei car with a style that hinted back to the old ones. Honda’s press release says this:

Tokyo, April 18, 1997 – Honda Motor Co., Ltd. introduced its new “Life” mini vehicle today. It has an individualistic, stylish design and an excellent package for daily use. It also offers superb performance, with both driving stability and ride comfort. The Life will be sold through Honda Primo dealerships nationwide from April 27. This vehicle is not only “easy to handle, functional, and economical”, which are advantages of mini vehicles, but also has a spacious cabin, with priority given to driver and passenger comfort.

The Life sets a new standard for mini vehicles at a reasonable price. The most up-to-date features are included. The Life has a driver-side SRS air bag, heat-absorbing green glass that absorbs ultraviolet rays in all windows, an anti-bacterial steering wheel, and an arm rest as standard equipment.

Honda aimed to create a vehicle with new attributes over and above those of other mini vehicles, i.e., being “easy to handle, functional, and economical”. As a result, the Honda Life has the following three new mini vehicle features.

• “Multi-utility” achieved through spacious cabin and luggage space.
• “Good driving performance” with both steering stability and ride comfort.
• Fun, tasteful, new “Styling”

The second-generation Life was marketed as a smart car with solutions for everyday living. The brochure talked up the car’s many different storage bins, economical engine, tight turning radius, and flexible seating. The seats in the Life can fold flat for a high cargo volume. Or, you can fold them all of the way back to turn the whole interior into a giant bed. The rear seats had a nifty feature where you could set levels of recline just like you could with front seats in a typical car.

The Life was also marketed as somewhat of a luxury Kei car with its four-speaker stereo, optional automatic climate control, optional power locks, optional power windows, optional alloy wheels, and optional keyless entry. This marketing of the car being more luxurious might be why, despite the availability of a five-speed manual transmission, it seems most second-gen Honda Life cars have a slow three-speed automatic.

Somewhat interesting about the Life is the fact that it shares its JA4 platform with the Honda Today of the same era. Because of this, their underlying components and even basic interiors are the same, but Honda went in very different directions with both cars. The softer-looking Today was marketed to women and even has a glovebox door that serves as a makeup holder. Since the Life has the same dashboard, it means that my car also has the same glovebox. Yet, the brochure makes no mention of this.

While the Life JA4 was big on features, it never spent enough time in Honda’s lineup to sell that many units. Thus, it’s much easier to find Today JA4s than Life JA4s. As such, when I buy parts for this car, I just buy parts for the Today JA4. So, if you want a Life and want to have an easier time finding parts, maybe you’ll have better luck with the mid-1998 model.

Mercedes Streeter

Calling the second-generation Honda Life a forgotten car isn’t exactly hyperbole. It sold from 1997 to just halfway through 1998, when changing Kei car regulations prompted Honda to launch a third-generation Life that was slightly larger, slightly more powerful, and on a new platform.

Most of the time, if you see a Honda Life in America, it will likely be one of those third-generation models. In fact, when I took my own Honda Life for its maiden voyage, I found a 1998 or 1999 Honda Life in the wild, which will probably be as shocking to you as it was to me.

Making this issue worse is that Japan’s taxing scheme effectively makes cars like these worthless. In Japan, vehicles are taxed on weight, engine displacement, age, and even the prefecture they’re in. Generally, larger, more expensive, and more powerful cars will be subject to higher taxes. Some taxes are paid out only once while others are levied on a regular schedule. By the time a car hits 18, the weight tax is 50 percent more than when it was new. Additionally, a car that’s over 13 years old is subject to a 20 percent increase in engine displacement tax.

A huge point of the kei-jidōsha, Japan’s smallest class of highway-legal car, is to give people tax breaks for buying a tiny, slow, and maneuverable clean car. However, a classic Kei sort of loses out on those benefits. So, unless it’s a legend like the Honda Beat, Autozam AZ-1, Suzuki Cappuccino, or similar, most Keis end up practically disposed of in Japanese auctions. You can buy a running and driving Kei truck for less than what an American scrapyard would give you for it.

Sadly, it’s entirely possible that had I not purchased this Honda Life, it might have been resigned to a life of going through the Japanese auction system but never actually selling. Everyone loves the JDM legends like the Nissan Skyline GT-R, but few people go after the regular, everyday cars that most people actually drove in Japan. Buying this Honda Life would be like if someone in America decided to save a minty Chevy Corsica.

My 1997 Honda Life

It looks like I got a great score with this car. The Japanese auction inspection sheet indicated a car with 150,832 kilometers, or 93,722 miles. That’s actually high-ish mileage for a Kei car, but I didn’t really care. The rest of the condition sheet noted only minor problems for an overall condition score of 3.5, or a score I’d call “daily driver” condition. By that, I mean the car has some problems, but they are easily repaired, and the car is otherwise presentable as something that you can happily scoot around in.

However, as I noted in a previous story on this car, auction condition sheets should not be taken as gospel. Always pay for an independent inspection:

Most of the time, the original auction condition sheet is good enough to give you a decent idea of whether you’ll like the car or not. While these auction sheets are good, they are never perfect. The inspectors at the auctions will usually get more obvious damage correct, but either miss other damage or exaggerate what damage they do see. So, if the original auction sheet seems good enough, it’s probably worth paying the $20 for an independent inspection. In my case, the original inspection said that the car had “peeling paint” on the right fender and more peeling paint on the tailgate. The inspection also said that the car had a rear power window that did not work. My car was originally a borderline case to me. It was painted in a rare color, but paint peel and non-functional window regulators are both deal-breakers for me. I don’t want to immediately have to import a window regulator from Japan when I could just buy a car that already has working windows.

Still, I loved the car’s color, and I loved that it was a high trim model, so I paid for the independent inspection. This inspector clarified that the car wasn’t suffering from paint peel, but a very small patch on the fender where the clear coat began fading. There was another patch around the keyhole for the tailgate. But, important was the fact that the inspector believed the paint underneath was still in good shape. Okay, I can handle that!

Even better was what the independent inspection found inside the vehicle. The auction inspector said one window didn’t work. Well, the fella handling the independent inspection tested each individual window rather than just the driver switch panel. He found that every window actually worked great. The only problem was that the down button didn’t work for a single rear window on the driver door switch. That was pretty much all of the confirmation I needed that I just need to replace a switch, not a regulator.

I was stoked to pick up my car and find out that it was in better shape than I expected. The paint not only still had shine in it, but it also glistened. I checked underneath, and the underbody of this car looks like something that could have spent the past 28 years in California. I’ve already had some minor work done to the car, and the bolts zipped off like they just rolled off the factory floor. I was also shocked to find a lot of fresh hardware and fasteners. Whoever owned this car deeply cared about keeping it in good shape.

This was also reflected in the vehicle’s inspection stickers, which suggested that the car was good until December 26, 2024. But instead of fixing the very few minor faults to pass the next Shaken inspection, the owner decided to sell the vehicle. Replacing the tires alone cost about as much as the car was worth, so I get it. Everyone has a point where they decide it’s time to say goodbye.

Now, the car is mine, and in a separate piece, I will write about what I had to fix. Sadly, my independent inspection did miss a couple of things, and while I wasn’t happy to need to fix them, I’m still stoked with this little car.

Driving my little car around is a bit unlike my other Keis. The Honda Beat is super low-slung and sporty. I feel like I’m driving a mini NSX when I’m behind the wheel of one. Pretty much every other car towers over me, too, from Mazda Miatas to Smart Fortwos. Meanwhile, driving my Suzuki Every Kei van feels a bit like commanding a scaled-down city bus.

The Honda Life feels like I’m just driving a normal Honda, only scaled down and with the steering wheel on the right side. The seating position is relatively high, and the ergonomics feel about as normal as you can get in a car with this footprint. It’s also very much like a late ’90s Honda where there’s boosted steering, but still quite a lot of feeling in the wheel.

There isn’t a whole lot to driving the Life. The 656cc E07A inline-three engine makes a lazy 48 HP, down from its ravenous tune when fitted to the Honda Beat. The three-speed auto is even lazier, shifting into second gear at only 20 km/h (12 mph) and into third gear somewhere above 25 mph.

This thing is absolutely slow, like Mercedes-Benz W123 240D or VW Beetle slow. Forget a stopwatch, use a calendar to measure acceleration to 60 mph. But it will hit 60 mph and beyond! I had the speedometer reading the equivalent of 75 mph before I backed down. Sure, it took three business days to get there, but the Honda had no problems reaching that speed.

The Life is also pretty tall and narrow, so handling isn’t its strong suit, either. The car came with dry-rotted Yokohama BluEarth tires. Sadly, couldn’t just buy a new set of these tires as they were not sold in America. As it turns out, finding 155/65 R13 tires in the United States is awful, and I ended up with some sort of discount brand that I never heard of. I’m sure the tires I bought suck, but the Honda Life is so slow that I doubt I’m ever going to find out just how bad the tires are.

Now, I’m sure I’m making my little Honda sound like total junk, but it’s really the exact opposite. Its lazy drive, comfortable seats, and overall laid-back personality make the car a great summer cruiser. I just point the car down a road and ease into a cruise. Amusingly, it also has one of the coldest air-conditioners in my entire fleet. But I also don’t use it much because it makes the car feel like it loses 10 HP with the push of a button.

Am I disappointed that I didn’t get a manual? Sure, I guess, but I have a bunch of other cars and motorcycles with manual transmissions. Heck, I just bought an MGF with a manual. It’s not really a big deal. I love this body style, the color, and the interior, and I was willing to give up rowing my own gears to have it. I’m also aware that a nearly 30-year-old three-speed automatic probably isn’t the best for longevity, but it’s not like I’m ever going to put a ton of miles on this car, anyway.

Love Of My Life

I think what I’m most surprised by is just how much I’m into this little car. It’s not really special. There aren’t many “quirks and features.” It’s not fast. It’s not a “legend.” Heck, my state of Illinois wants to ban it. It’s just a car, but a really cute and surprisingly relaxing car.

So, what’s next for the little car? I want to fix the two small bad spots in the clear coat and one suspension component needs to be replaced. Then, it’ll go into my secret mini warehouse where I store half of my favorite cars. Oh, and it needs a name, but one hasn’t come to me just yet.

If you’re looking to get into imported cars and you don’t have a ton of cash, consider buying a car that nobody is really looking for. You’ll find that you can get great cars for well under $5,000 total. You’ll get something that’ll break nearly as many necks as a JDM legend and have fun, too. That said, be prepared to have to fix a couple of things. I mean, these are still nearly 30-year-old cars, after all. But, with some patience and maybe a little luck, you too can get a Life.

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