I wish you a happy Easter with one of the cutest cars by Suzuki: the Lapin! Lapin means rabbit or bunny in French, so now you know the connection with the Easter bunny!
Lapin history
The Suzuki Lapin was launched in 2002 as a cubical kei car based on the underpinnings of the Suzuki Alto. It also got sold as the Mazda Spanio under the Autozam flag, but that car is less interesting as it’s just a rebadged version of the Lapin.
Rabbit accents everywhere!
As you can see, the logo for the Suzuki Lapin is the silhouette of a rabbit. Even in the Lapin name, the dot on the i is styled as the head of a rabbit.
It’s even worse on the inside of the 10th anniversary Lapin: the rabbit head is everywhere! It features on the welcome screen, the Lapin logo on the speedometer and the steering wheel, the door handles, and the seat fabric tags. Let’s hope it’s not the killer rabbit of Caerbannog!
As a side note: the Mazda Spanio did not feature any of this bunny-silliness!
Feminine touch
The Suzuki Lapin was mainly targeted towards female drives. In the above section of the accessories brochure, this becomes clear with the non-car accessories available. The brochure does feature a couple of racing-oriented accessories, so it’s not only the typical feminine touch for this car!
DAMD Ancel body kit
And then I found out the DAMD company actually sells many body kits for the Lapin! The best one is the Ancel body kit which transforms the Lapin into a Renault R4! Renault is a French company, so with the Lapin meaning bunny in French, we have gone full circle!
You can even order special seat covers and door cards to match the true interior of a Renault R4!
Down the rabbit hole
At first, I thought I’d do a short post and do something funny with regard to Easter. Naturally, I thought of the Alto Lapin and started to look for photos featuring the logos and such. And that’s when I went all down the rabbit hole (pun intended!) and found all sorts of crazy things exist around the Lapin!
I found the Ancel conversion to be the most likeable one. I’d even go as far as to declare the Lapin with the Renault R4 makeover to be the best Japanese car after the Nissan Pao! I really had to fight the urge to immediately go look for one on Goo-net! Unfortunately, I lost to that urge and found an Ancel for sale. I was also able to find a Hummer conversion and an Alto RSR engine swapped one though.
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