The way of the kei

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It’s impossible to ignore 22-year-old Thomas Smith’s truck. First, it’s small. Really small, and white, and quite rectangular. While driving on Beach Road, Smith’s knees narrowly clear the steering wheel to reach the pedals, and a larger car would have no problem passing on the left.

The driver’s seat and wheel are on the wrong side of the vehicle, the windows need to be manually rolled down with a crank handle, and there’s no hood, at least not where most cars have them.

“The hood is under my seat,” Smith said over the roar of the engine. Once parked, he lifted his seat cushion to reveal an assortment of pipes and a proportionately small engine.

But what the car lacks in space up front is made up for in the back. It’s less a car and more a truck bed that happens to have two seats attached.

“It’s a tin can,” Smith said. “It’s not super-comfortable, but it’s hyper-functional.”

The irregular car is bare-bones, and not fancy. But Smith still gets a lot of waves, big smiles, and the occasional gawking on the Island.

His chosen mode of transportation when he treks from his home in Oak Bluffs to Aquinnah for landscape work is his manual Mazda Autozam Scrum, a Japanese kei truck that’s more than 25 years old, and about 11 feet front to back. His kei, short for kei-jidōsha, or “light vehicle,” is around 1,500 pounds. Smith boasts it can still haul 600 to 700 pounds.

Smith and his Autozam Scrum are part of a niche group of Islanders who own and embrace the kei. Because of its small size, high gas mileage, and ability to traverse almost anywhere, owners say, the Japanese trucks are an asset on an Island with low speed limits and dirt backroads.

Smith doesn’t pass another kei vehicle without some sort of acknowledgement and shared understanding between the two drivers. “Every single time, yes,” Smith said when asked if other kei owners notice him on the road.

But the keis, while adored by their drivers, could really have just become tin cans if state regulators had their way. “It’d have become a $7,000 paperweight,” Smith said, recalling this summer’s near disaster. 

In June, the state Registry of Motor Vehicles announced a ban on the registration of the small Japanese cars and trucks in Massachusetts. Though the now-archived web page said “existing unexpired registrations” would remain active as the state worked on updating policy, there was palpable worry among owners on the Island. 

The department stated that the ban came about because the vehicles don’t meet federal safety standards.

But some Massachusetts kei vehicle owners, many of whom had recently purchased or were expecting shipment of the Japanese vehicles, pushed back on the ban. They spoke to the state Department of Transportation (MassDOT) board of directors in July, created a Facebook group called Massachusetts JDM Imports Advocates, and emailed state representatives and senators. 

The ban wasn’t unique to Massachusetts. Owners in Texas, Michigan, and other states have faced similar roadblocks.

One such advocate was Brian McNally, owner of a “robin’s-egg blue” mini-truck, who is an off-Island teacher but works at the Seafood Shanty in Edgartown in the summer. They mobilized pretty well, McNally said. There were even talks of a “Boston Kei Party” sticker.

To McNally, his kei truck is a fantastic second car, and lends itself to the Island. It goes max 40 miles per hour, just below the highest speed limit Island-wide, can navigate into parking spots no one else can get into, and lugs pretty much anything you need lugged: wood, bark, mulch, and keystones.

And the cost is a fraction of what he’d pay for a halfway-decent full-size truck, and he doesn’t have to fill up the tank as much.

Some theorize that the ban had less to do with safety standards and was in part because of emissions from the old mini vehicles, but McNally said they produce “a needle in the haystack” compared with other emissions. There are more harmful pollutants than Japanese mini trucks, McNally said.

Facing some backlash over the ban, the RMV reversed its decision on Sept. 17. The department completed a “preliminary assessment of industry standards related to kei trucks, cars, and vans,” the department said in a statement. New registrations were allowed after the reversal, and already registered vehicles could continue their existing registrations and renewals “without interruption,” the statement said.

Though keis often don’t comply with all federal motor vehicle safety standards, so far, Smith and other kei owners have been able to work around federal rules because of an exemption that allows any vehicle to be registered if it is 25 years or older, regardless of the country of origin. 

Smith’s journey to find a kei started in 2018, when Smith, his father, David Smith, and the late Robert (“Bobby”) Fuller Jr., his father’s business partner, embarked on a venture together to figure out how to import some of the vehicles to the States.

The trio spoke to a broker stateside, who organized someone in Japan to go to an auction, purchase the trucks, load them into a 40-foot container, and export them back to Port Elizabeth, N.J. on a freight boat. Four came to the Island, and two went to buyers in New Jersey — one van and one dump truck. 

Fuller, who had a house in the Garden State, was their Jersey liaison.

Smith thinks that importation laws are so strict because American truckmakers want to keep control of the market.

It was worth the hassle for Smith, though. It’s much more fuel-efficient compared with American-made trucks, and even has the same size bed as other pickups. In fact, his bed is more versatile than other pickup beds, because the sides can fold down and leverage more space.

It costs Smith about $25 to fill up his tank, which holds only six or seven gallons, but he gets around 45 miles per gallon, which goes a long way on an Island that is 20 miles across.

Smith’s boss, Isaac Taylor, Island landscaper and local musician, also drives a kei vehicle — a red Toyota High HiAce fire truck that is closer to 13 feet long, which he said might’ve protected his car from the ban, because the state-classified kei vehicles are 130 inches or less. The Toyota was actually used as a fire truck in Japan, but it’s handy in the landscape business, Taylor said, because he can drive it right up onto the lawn.

Taylor also took advantage of the U.S. tolerance for vehicles over 25 years old when he purchased the fire truck in the mid-2010s. It had virtually no miles, and was basically brand-new despite its age, he said.

They’re not great for everywhere, but they are great for here, he said. “In a perfect world, everyone would have golf carts,” and the Island is a perfect place to look at alternative transportation, he said. 

While a perfect vehicle for the Vineyard, the local drivers do worry that the state registry could try to bring the ban back. The RMV plans to conduct a formal study to “review safety implications of kei vehicles on the public roadways,” the September statement said. The RMV said they’d make an announcement once the formal study is complete. State lawmakers are keeping an eye on the issue as well, though. In response to the RMV, state Rep. Steve Howitt of Bristol refiled a previously dead bill to specifically classify kei vehicles, and legalize the road use of these older cars.

But while the state and its leaders work out the details, Smith, McNally, and Taylor are safe to roam the backroad trails, hills, and narrow roads of the Vineyard by way of the kei.