Around for two generations, Daihatsu’s quirky Vision Copen Concept has been reborn as a modern iteration of the original sports car.
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The Daihatsu Copen, a characterful miniature sports car available in Japan, has always garnered interest from enthusiasts. Familiar to South Africans in its first generation, the follow-up which arrived in 2014 birthed some weird and wonderful iterations, including a hardtop coupe, a sporty GR Sport variant, and a nostalgic Cero edition. Moving to the current day, the Japanese automaker is set to debut its Vision Copen Concept at the 2023 Japan Mobility Show later this month, but despite its familiar looks, all is not as it seems.
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Most notably, it’s significantly larger than the standard production model. The typical Copen is a kei car, which means it must adhere to certain size restrictions for the Japanese market. Going into the details, the regular Copen measures just 3 396 mm in length and 1 475 mm in width. In contrast, the Vision stretches 3 835 mm in length and 1 694 mm in width.
This means that the Copen Vision has grown to nearly the dimensions of a Mazda MX-5 and like its Japanese counterpart, it adopts a rear-wheel-drive layout. This is a departure from the standard Copen, which routes power to the front wheels. With a larger 1,3-litre powerplant as opposed to the kei car’s meagre 0,6-liter turbocharged three-cylinder, it is believed that it’s larger motor churns out more power to cope with the added size and weight. The automaker also adds that it has been tuned to run on carbon-neutral fuels. As driver-oriented as the model is, connecting the motor to the wheels is an automatic transmission instead of the manual gearbox available for the standard model.
Inside, the peppy model features a digital instrument cluster, a compact infotainment system, Porsche-style capacitive-touch buttons, and door loops for ease of use.
