Daihatsu Other Cuore 550 1978

This was my Kei car project, but family changes (now have one) mean this will no longer be suitable for my Mrs. I was going to fix this up for cheap entertaining motoring, but she now has a lightly armoured mini baby carrier instead. I already have an old Kei car. To top it off, EQC have arrived, and we need to clear the driveway.

It's an L-40 two door. It has the Daihatsu AB series 2 cylinder 550cc motor (trademe doesn't a 2 cylinder option yet; one of these days they'll catch up with these 1978 gems, and the fiat 500 twinair). This was a technological tour-de-force in the day, and a sad business failure. It was too expensive to make, with all the balance shafts and so on. Ran smooth though. Even though Suzuki borrowed it for a while when the Japanese emissions regulations changed and caught them on the hop, and Toyota put a turbocharged version in their FG-5 forklift. I didn't get to see if it bolted in :( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daihatsu_A-series_engine I'm told there's only 2 of these left on the road in NZ. I was keen to get a 3rd going. I've paid ~2.5k to get it where it is; oh well, my loss your gain. I need to move on.

The good: Runs (poorly), Rare, funky (although cleaning the carpets and headlining will probably help with that EDIT: actually, it's dry inside, it has been kept under a soft breathable cover for the last few years). The bad: Has been de-reg. I have ~$1700 in receipts for work done on it, but it failed on rust needing cert repair and a smoky engine (rings, valve seals?), needs some brake work (see VINZ pic). You'll probably need to own a welder, and know the cert process to make this worthwhile for you.