- 92,372
- Rule 12
- GTP_Famine
Daihatsu Leeza (L111) Spider Turbo 1991
When the penultimate set of Kei car regulations arrived in 1990, bringing in the 660cc engines and the "gentleman's agreement" of 63hp, several of Japan's domestic manufacturers decided to push the limits of what the class could offer beyond the intended, humble four-ish seat small city car.
A lot of these offerings are well-known - the Autozam AZ-1, Honda Beat, and Suzuki Cappuccino (sometimes called, collectively, the ABCs) all being fun, "performance" twists on the class - but some barely twitched the needle even domestically, never mind making it to the wishlists abroad when the cars started to become subject to the shaken and sent to exporters instead.
Of those, the Daihatsu Leeza Spider Turbo is among the greatest, funniest, most significant, and rarest of them all:
Enter the Leeza, a conventional front-wheel drive, three-door hatchback originally launched in 1986. It was based on a shortened - yes shortened - version of the Daihatsu Mira (or Cuore) kei car's platform and offered with the then-maximum 550cc engine in three-cylinder guise.
Sold as a four-seater with a colossal 32hp, or as a van which stripped out the joke rear seats and replaced them with strapping points for loads as well as gaining a turbocharger (optional on the saloon) for an eye-watering 49hp, the Leeza didn't entirely prove to be a success. Indeed most sales were of the van form, despite the later introduction of a woman-focussed "Cha Cha" edition.
With the change to the Kei car regulations coming in January 1990, many manufacturers chose the 1989 Tokyo Motor Show (October-November) to reveal some of their concepts and upcoming production models - including Mazda's Autozam AZ-1 (as the AZ550), and the Nissan Figaro - and Daihatsu chose to reveal its own development of the Leeza alongside variations of the Hijet and Sportrak.
The L111 would replace the L100, gaining the 12v 660cc engine without a turbocharger for 49hp, while a model known as the Oxy-R would be the only one to get the full-fat, 63hp turbocharged unit as highlighted by the bonnet scoop. Or at least the only saloon model...
A grainy VHS from the 1989 Tokyo Motor Show is the only evidence I can find of it!
... because Daihatsu also took the opportunity to show off the Leeza Spider, a two-door, two-seat version of the Leeza, powered exclusively by the 63hp turbo.
Rather than going the route that everyone else took of developing a new platform for a rear-wheel drive convertible (or, in the case of the Honda City, hiring Pininfarina to style a convertible based on an existing car), Daihatsu... just cut the roof off a Leeza.
Following the show, Daihatsu spent some time refining the concept, reinforcing the platform and developing a manually folding roof mechanism for the Leeza, and showing off a variant known as the FX-228 Concept (sneakily based on the larger Cuore) at the 1991 Geneva International Motor Show in March.
Just a few months later though, the Leeza Spider Turbo made it to market in November that year in basically unchanged physical form from two years earlier...
Shockingly, reaction was... muted. Essentially looking like someone had just cut the roof off a hatchback and half-arsed a fabric roof onto it (as was all the rage in the UK at the same time too) it made for a pretty ungainly vehicle despite coming at a high specification that included real leather.
The Leeza Spider Turbo only came in two colours: Black or Red (and yes, those were the literal names). However it was offered with manual (five-speed) and automatic (three-speed options). It also came with some of the funniest accessories I've ever seen including both full- and half-tonneaux:
Even more shockingly, Daihatsu sold so few of them that you could write each one down on a single sheet of paper and not get through a ream. Quoted numbers vary, but it's somewhere between 200 and 400, all made in a less-than two-year period from November 1991 to August 1993 - when the Leeza as a whole was canned in favour of the Opti.
However, the Leeza Spider Turbo's general failure didn't dissuade Daihatsu from trying again, especially as the ABCs had gone out of production and left a gaping hole in the market. Lessons learned from the Leeza Spider Turbo specifically resulted in... the Daihatsu Copen.
As a car, it perhaps wasn't spectacular, but as one of very few open-top Kei offerings in the early days of the modern era it certainly earned its place in the history books even if it's largely forgotten these days.
It would also add some historical context to the far more famous Copen, as well as doing some justice to both the Daihatsu and general Kei offerings of Gran Turismo.
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