A fashionable vehicle with an American taste

Kei-trucks trucks change shape according to their owners’ lifestyles and undergo major changes to suit various situations. A light truck, which serves as a partner for work and sometimes as a vehicle for enjoying hobbies, enriches lifestyles and carries ‘fun’ with it. Tomohiko Yoshinaga’s Honda Acty is a stylish vehicle with an American taste.

Turning a kei-truck into a monster truck

Tomohiko Yoshinaga is one of those who have fallen completely in love with the stylish, cool, and convenient use of kei-trucks. He owns a Honda Acty and considers cars to be a part of fashion daily. For this reason, when you look at Yoshinaga’s car, you will see that the cargo bed has been roughly stenciled and painted, creating a fashionable vehicle with an American taste.

Mr Yoshinaga originally used an old Volkswagen Type 3 Variant as his first car. However, this model was not equipped with air-conditioning, making it a bit difficult to drive in the summer. So he consulted Garage Bug, an old Volkswagen dealer in Hyogo Prefecture that he has been a customer of for a long time, to see if there was a better car for him. They happened to see an ‘Acty’ on the shop floor, fell in love with it at first sight, and bought it immediately.

In addition to Volkswagens, Garage Bug also builds and sells American-style cars as a hobby of the company president. Light trucks are particularly popular and are sold as soon as they are put on display in the shop. The secret of their popularity is that no two models have the same specifications, as they are built according to the president’s own flair and ideas at the time.

But there is a firm concept behind the production. That is to reproduce the motif of the monster trucks that exist in the USA, which are fitted with huge tires and are based on light trucks. Hence those models are named “Baby Monster Trucks” by Garage Bug.