CarBrandLogos archive · Daihatsu · 1963
Daihatsu's first proper car, and the first Japanese car sold new in Britain.
Discover the storyPhoto: Mytho88 · CC BY-SA 3.0
The story
Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Daihatsu Compagno, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.
01
Daihatsu had spent decades building engines and three-wheelers before it attempted a conventional passenger car. The Compagno was that attempt: a small rear-drive saloon with a separate chassis, styled by Vignale in Turin, offered from 1963 as a two- and four-door sedan and later as a van, a pickup and a neat little cabriolet.
Daihatsu Compagno 1000 Estate · order_242 from Chile · CC BY-SA 2.0
02
The engineering was conservative even for its day — a ladder frame when unitary bodies were becoming standard, and 797 cc and 958 cc fours driving the rear wheels — but it was solidly made and it gave Daihatsu a foothold above the kei class it had grown up in.
Daihatsu Pick Up · nakhon100 · CC BY 2.0
03
Its footnote in history is an export one. The Compagno was the first Japanese car officially imported and sold in the United Kingdom, arriving in 1965 in very small numbers and preceding the flood that followed a few years later. The Consorte replaced it, by which point Daihatsu had begun the long association with Toyota that shaped everything after.
1965-1969 Daihatsu Compagno utility · Jeremy from Sydney, Australia · CC BY 2.0
At a glance
Engine
797 Designer
VignaleBody
2/4-door sedanTechnical specification
Badge at launch
This is the marque emblem that accompanied the Compagno's era. The full identity timeline is documented in the brand archive.
Explore the logo history →From the journal
Contemporaries from the 1960s
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