7 Of The Quirkiest Japanese Concept Cars

Concept cars allow engineers and designers to play out their wildest fantasies, usually on the public stage of motor shows. Sometimes, that produces some extraordinary vehicles, others… downright strange.

Of all the manufacturers out there, you can usually rely on Japan to come up with some of the most bonkers of those ideas – both good and bad. We’ve picked out seven of the quirkiest Japanese concept cars.

Honda WOW

If you’ve got a dog and drive a car, we can only assume that at some stage, you’ve considered a car ideal for your dog.

What about something designed entirely for your pup, though? That’s what the Honda WOW envisioned. WOW indeed.

Its boot floor was lined with wood to make cleaning it easier, it had a cute little cutout in the bumper so your dog could easily hop in and even a compartment for them to travel in within the dashboard.

Toyota Pod

Have you ever wondered what your car would be thinking if it were a sentient being? Apparently, you’re not the only person on this planet to have had that slightly strange thought.

The Toyota Pod was designed with emotions. It could express happiness and sadness through its eyes and light strips and even excitement, thanks to a dog-like tail mounted at the back.

As well as communicating with you, it could talk to other cars wirelessly. For example, it’d tell another it was overtaking – and then say thank you afterward. We’re slightly creeped out by this one, to be honest.

Nissan Pivo

If reversing is your worst enemy, the Nissan Pivo would’ve been the car for you. A gigantic, unsettling orb placed upon a chassis could rotate 360 degrees to allow you to be facing the front of the car at all times.

That was… about all the Pivo had going for it. Being electric in 2003 was a bit unusual but not unheard of for a concept car. Independent four-wheel steering was pretty neat, though.

It even had a sequel in the what-was-the-point Pivo 2, and then the Pivo 3, which did away with the orb in favour of greater rotation on the wheels.

Suzuki Sharing Coach

Using a car to carry a smaller form of transport was nothing new in 2007 – the Honda City housing the Motocompo famously proved that was a neat idea – but a car to haul two single-person pods? Odd indeed.

That was the Suzuki Sharing Coach, which existed purely as a means of transporting the already-odd Pixy, itself designed for low-speed driving on paths and in buildings. Not much more to say on this one, really.

Yamaha OX99-11

The ‘90s can be defined by a certain British supercar with a central driving position and a V12 engine. We could’ve potentially put the Yamaha OX99-11 alongside that, had production panned out.

Yamaha had developed a 3.5-litre V12 for Formula 1 and decided to build a road car around it, leading to the bonkers-looking thing you see here. It may look like a single-seater, but it actually had two in tandem housed in a fighter jet-style canopy.

400bhp came at 10,000rpm and was delivered in a car weighing just 1150kg. Production was planned, but as is often the case, the project was deemed too expensive to be worth it.

Honda Unibox

The Honda Unibox was a car designed to do it all. As well as, well… being a car, it had the ability to be transformed into a living room, a cafe, a bedroom… basically, anything you wanted, thanks to its modular interior.

Onboard, it had built-in support for TV and a mobile phone (this was 2001), while space was made for usable cabinets, and it even had two foldable electric scooters.

We don’t really need to explain why this never spawned a production car, but we can’t help but think how ineffective it’d have been at being the car to live your life in, given the transparent body panels exposed every part of you to passersby…

Suzuki GSX-R/4

Suzuki is great at making silly-fast motorcycles. Suzuki is also great at making cars that are small and light. Yet, those two things have never been put together on a road car.

The idea was explored once though, in the form of the Suzuki GSX-R/4 Concept. This had the 1.3-litre, 173bhp four-stroke engine lifted from the Hayabusa, powering a car weighing just 640kg.

It could’ve hit 186mph apparently (imagine that without a roof), and even came with a built-in race track coaching system with hillclimb legend Nobuhiro ‘Monster’ Tajima offering advice.