New Daihatsu

Daihatsu is not the name of its founder unlike several of the Japanese carmakers, as the company name is actually a concoction of two Japanese characters (of their "alphabet"). The first "dai" is the first kanji, or character, of the town of Osaka. The second "hatsu" is the first character of the expression "engine manufacturer". Put them together and the result is the name of Japan's largest small car company, which is responsible for engineering all of Toyota's small car engines, designing most of Toyota's small cars (including the current Yaris range) and even building them in joint-effort factories. Daihatsu has an intriguing history - and a reputation as the Number One manufacturer of small cars in the world - and this has given Daihatsu Cars the most amazing status across the entire motor industry. It is owned by Toyota, one of the world's largest and most profitable carmakers, and has been so since 1999, although its relationship with the company started in earnest as early as 1967, which, for most Japanese car companies, was the "dawning of time", as the period coincided with Japan's assault on car markets other than its own. Although the company and its products remain of fairly limited interest and small volume in the UK new car scene, it is largely because its interests are managed by a concessionaire, rather than the actual manufacturer. Whether this situation will ever change is always open to question but the Birmingham-based IM Group remains the current UK representative for the brand, although the actual number of models sold in the UK is limited compared with the company's actual production line-up, as many of the models are from the Japanese "kei" class of models, which are the truly sub-compact city-class of machines many of which do not meet European safety standards.