Fun Times

Massive grilles, very serious performance numbers, bloated pricetags that just keep swelling. Hypercars are returning numbers so wild as to be completely abstract, like expressing the weight of a supermassive black hole in bushels. If you like more, this is the market for you.

There is another way, at least in other markets. The fun, the whimsical. It expands the notion of desirability beyond sportiness, which succeeded luxury in the car hierarchy sometime in the last few decades. Drivers once aspired to two-tone sedans with quiet, comfortable leather interiors. Now Americans hunger for 302-hp Toyota RAV4 plug-in hybrids.

In Japan, Mitsuoka turns that same RAV4—no American’s go-to starting point for an extensive aesthetic transformation—into a neoretro ‘70s wagon called Buddy, and the Honda Civic into the M55, an equally weird restyled creation. While it does so through a retro lens, what Mitsuoka is really doing is suggesting to buyers that they don’t have to take traditional vehicle selling points so seriously. A RAV4 is already practical, why not make it a goofy adventuremobile, something nonconformist without being outrageous?

In Europe, Citroen and Fiat are having a riot with a shared quadracycle platform. Set aside its unsuitability for many uses in our market and try to put it in its home context. The Fiat Toppolino looks like the sort of expensive kid’s toy car you’d see advertised on Instagram, click through the ad to the site, see the price, and quickly close the window. But it’s a car! I don’t revel in attention but just imagine the joy it’d bring to little kids at a Cars and Coffee event. 

The Ami has been released in a multitude of variants and special editions in its few years on the market. The My Ami Buggy (a naming structure so Gallic it should be drinking a petit blanc) looks like a mutant chibi overlanding van, except it has no doors. It does have a roof-mounted spare tire and headlight guards, though. 

Why? Because it’s fun. And so that’s why the new Rip Curl Ami Buggy marketing tie-up doesn’t even faze us. Automaker x Brand is usually not a recipe for anything but an increased price point, but adding a surfboard to a purple Ami Buggy with tube doors and recycled wetsuit floormats is delightful. A Citroen x Internal Revenue Service Ami Buggy would probably be fascinating. It’s an Ami: it makes almost everything better.

And that’s despite the fact that the Ami is barely a car in the traditional sense. At a wheel of cheese over 1,000 pounds, and with a top speed of 28 mph, it only works in a certain type of city. And yet given a situation in which you might borrow or rent one, in a city where it would work, how could you not? It looks way more fun than a rideshare scooter. And even a rideshare e-scooter parked badly on a sidewalk is more fun than the average ultra-basic small vehicle these days. Is there anything fun about a Volkswagen Taos? (Did you remember the Taos even exists?)

Meanwhile, the similarly sized Suzuki Jimny is an instant cult classic, selling well in many markets, offering legitimate offroad capability, and also being a canvas for some creative, offbeat customizations and restylings. Where Mitsuoka is weird, many of the Jimny remixes are cute. Both are good, because both are fun.

The Garage ILL CH:AMP is a Jimny trying very earnestly to look like a Toyota Hilux Champ. That, in and of itself, is adorable. It’s like a platonic junior high crush playing out through imitating the crushee’s look. It’s not like the Hilux Champ is something vintage enough to engender nostalgia; it’s on sale right now! It’s relatively new, and cheap! It’s about as blue-collar a truck as Asia gets, and the fact that there’s enough interest for an outfit to craft a kit to make the Jimny into a little Champ SUV speaks to the Hilux Champ’s casual appeal. 

None of these vehicles are powerful, conventionally attractive, or paper tigers. These are all modestly priced, modestly equipped, and modestly sized … except in the Ami’s case, it’s hardly any of these. And yet, the person flooring it in a My Ami Buggy at a breathtaking 28 mph is going to smile a lot. 

Things aren’t great for a lot of people right now. We have a tiny perch, observing a narrow slice of the country through the window of our experience. From where we sit, our corner of the world could use a little more silliness.