This is what a Yamaha’d kei car takes up for space. Not much. Not that an un-Yamaha’d kei car would take up any more room, but maybe I should just stop making up words and get on with it.

When the diminutive little thing hits the dyno, it fills the room with its presence. You might call it something of a natural public speaker. Toastmasters, Schmoastmasters.

If the engine note sounds a bit raspy, a bit whiney to you, that’s probably on account of the size of the motor. No amount of fiddling with headers and intakes and exhausts will increase the scarcely believable 354 cubic centimetres of displacement. For those of you keeping track at home, that’s the exact same volume as a can of Coca-Cola. The next time you pop a loonie into the vending machine for a soda, remember that Japanese samurais in the 1960’s managed to make an automobile engine of the same size. It simply beggars belief!

Then there are the samurais who meddled with the classic kei car. Adding Yamaha V-Max headers might sound logical and sane enough to you – but you’d be wrong. The Yamaha engine displaces 3.38 times as much and produces 4.29 times as much power. That’s analogous to slapping Bugatti Veyron headers on your Golf GTI.

It’s just too bad that Honda’s modern interpretation of the N360 won’t make nearly such high-spirited of sounds. Why? For starters, it won’t have Yamaha V-Max heads. Secondly, the EV-N will be electric.

[via krisdahl/Twitter]

[Photo credit: Honda]