CarBrandLogos archive · Daihatsu · 2002

DaihatsuCopen

A folding hard-top sports car built inside Japan's kei-car rulebook.

Photo: TTTNIS · CC0

The story

A defining chapter in Daihatsu history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Daihatsu Copen, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

The Copen took the most restrictive vehicle class in the world — 3.4 metres long, 660 cc — and used it to make a two-seat convertible with an electrically folding aluminium roof. That roof is the point. Cars costing five times as much were still using fabric; Daihatsu packaged a full metal top into a boot the size of a suitcase and sold the result as a mainstream product.

2007 Daihatsu OFC-1 02 · Mytho88 · CC BY-SA 3.0

Design and engineering

The 2002 original ran a turbocharged four-cylinder in Japan, with a naturally aspirated 1.3-litre four fitted for export markets where kei rules meant nothing. It was never quick, but it was light, it steered honestly and it looked like a scale model of something Italian, and it built a devoted following in Japan and Britain alike.

2011 Daihatsu D-X 01 · Mytho88 · CC BY-SA 3.0

In production

The second Copen, from 2014, changed approach with a structural frame carrying bolt-on resin body panels — the owner could, in principle, change the car's entire exterior design. It is one of very few genuinely playful cars still built to kei regulations, and it outlasted almost all of its rivals.

Daihatsu COPEN XPLAY S front · Tokumeigakarinoaoshima · CC BY-SA 4.0

At a glance