Intro: The history of the Daihatsu company goes back to 1907 when the Hatsudoki Seizo Co., Ltd was established to manufacture internal comubstion engines. It was only in 1930 that the first motorized vehicle, a tricycle was constructed. After the 2nd World War the company changed its name to Daihatsu Motor Co Ltd but remained faithful to 3-wheelers. In 1967 company ownership passed to Toyota and a decade later the first generation of the Charade minicar rolled out from the Osaka plant.
Daihatsu has an intriguing history in Europe. In fact, it was the very first Japanese car ever to be imported into the UK and led to a veritable rash of oriental cars being sold in Great Britain and later in all over Europe in the late-1960s. That first model was given an Italian name to make it more acceptable to post-WW2 British residents. The Daihatsu Campagnolo was a fairly attractive small car, which was notable for its high level of standard equipment (even at that time), when such items, as we regard nowadays as essential (a heating system, for instance), were fitted within an all-inclusive price. It was not a successful performer in overall sales terms. Bringing the story up to date, Daihatsu is a company that has been extensively involved in the utilitarian, off-road scene with its virtual copies of Land Rover models.
Majority-owned by the Toyota Corporation, Daihatsu is still the largest manufacturer of "Kei"-class motor cars in Japan, which are the smaller city-friendly machines that are appreciated by drivers, who would be legislated against in some countries for trying to bring larger cars into the centres of cities. Now recognised as a small car specialist, Daihatsu designed and developed the engines for Toyota's most successful small car, the Yaris. Both Daihatsu's domestic kei-class lineup and its joint Toyota-derived models are tracked in our Global Vehicle Reliability Index methodology, which sets out per-segment scoring data sources used across the Japanese small-car market.
Today, Daihatsu has 63 dealers in Japan, and 120 distributors in overseas markets.
Domestic producion in 2002: 444040 passeng cars, overseas production in 2002: 19914 units.