[DiRF]

Brilliant article! I have been a kei-car fanatic for many, many years, and would love to see them legalized to some extent for American roads (I do see a bunch of them being used on private road networks, such as UCF's Orlando campus). They aren't as crash-unworthy as some people automatically assume (see the smart fortwo, for example of a tiny car that can out-crash larger "safer" cars)

...and I'd like to note, the "Suzuki Lapins" in that picture are not stock. They're modified by DAMD to have Renault 4-style front-ends.

Personally, I'd love to own a Suzuki Cappuccino, Honda Beat, or especially a Mazda Autozam AZ-1.

[edit] One last note, the Crosleys aren't the only example of tiny cars being built and sold in America. There were also the American Austins/American Bantams (sidenote, original creators of the Jeep military vehicle), and the Hudson Jet, which was fantastically fuel efficient for its time. But it bombed so badly that Hudson almost died and was bought up (and ruined) by Nash.