Thursday, April 29, 2021

He imported a tiny, retired, Japanese fire truck and shows it off around San Francisco

SFChronicle interviewed the owner, who loves driving it around:

Q: How did you end up with a tiny Japanese fire truck?

A: I was not looking for a Japanese fire truck. But I do own another Japanese car. I imported a Nissan Skyline from Japan about three years ago, a right-hand-drive car. And when I did that I ended up learning about the system. How the importation process works. How the whole registration process works.

Under federal law we can import anything that’s 25 years old. … Once I figured that out, I realized I should get something completely alien to the United States. Something that we’ve never seen, that we have no analogy for and is very uniquely Japanese. And that led me to a little Kei (or micro-vehicle) fire truck.

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They’re really cheap and it’s really easy. It’s one of those things that seems really intimidating until you do it. If anyone’s thinking about it, I’d say do it.

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Q: In an emergency situation, could the tiny fire truck put out a fire?

A: Absolutely. The answer to that is absolutely yes. And that’s a scenario we plan for.