Suzuki Cappuccino

The Cappuccino is what happens when engineers treat the kei rulebook — 660 cc, 64 PS, 3.3 metres — as a dare. Suzuki mounted a turbocharged triple front-mid, behind the front axle, driving the rear wheels through a proper five-speed, with double wishbones at both ends and a 700 kg curb weight. The party trick was a three-piece aluminium roof that converts from closed coupe to T-top to targa to fully open. It out-handled cars with three times the power because it never had to slow down in the first place.

On paper a city runabout with delusions; on a tight touge, an assassin. Initial D canonised the EA11R when Sakamoto's Cappuccino hounded Keisuke's FD3S uphill, weaponising featherweight agility, and Gran Turismo let everyone else try the recipe. Britain even got a small official allocation, making the Cappuccino one of the only kei sports cars ever sold new outside Japan — and handing it a cult following wildly out of proportion to its production numbers.

Roughly 28,000 Cappuccinos were built, and rust, rot and kei-car attrition have eaten plenty of them. The EA11R's iron-block F6A is the enthusiast's pick over the later K6A car for its tuning headroom and first-draft purity. US eligibility arrived in 2016 and the pipeline has run steadily since, with clean examples appreciating as buyers realise nobody will ever build a 700 kg FR turbo roadster again. Small car, permanent legend.