The Daihatsu K-Open Is The Affordable RWD Sports Car We Deserve

The affordable rear-wheel drive sports car is almost extinct. In Britain, it’s a genre represented only by the Mazda MX-5, and even that’s nearly a £30k car these days. If any company can be relied on to further democratise a type of car, though – in Japan, at least – it’s Daihatsu, which has used the Tokyo Motor Show to unveil the K-Open, a compact rear-wheel drive sports car concept that looks tantalisingly close to production.

Clearly, it’s an evolution of the Copen, a bug-eyed roadster sold over two generations, the first of which made it to Europe. Both of those cars were front-wheel drive and built to kei car regulations.

The K-Open, meanwhile, also quite clearly has its roots in the Vision Copen concept, revealed at Tokyo back in 2023 as a larger, rear-wheel drive take on the Copen, powered by a beefier 1.3-litre engine. That concept outgrew the kei car ruleset, but while Daihatsu hasn't given much in the way of tech details on the K-Open, but that name and the yellow plates suggest it might be going back to its roots.

Unlike both production Copens so far, though, the slightly angrier-looking K-Open is rear-wheel drive. Better still, a manual gearbox is clearly visible in the interior pictures (as, delightfully, is an old-fashioned manual handbrake and some Porsche Carrera RS-aping fabric door pulls).

But the best part of all this? It sounds like Daihatsu’s going to build it. Speaking at a press briefing at the Tokyo Show, Koji Sato, CEO of Toyota – which now wholly owns Daihatsu – said: “As a carmaker, there can't be a more fun way to make cars. I truly can't wait to see what kind of car this Copen will be like.”

Now, the inevitable catch: after pulling out of Europe around a decade ago, Daihatsu now only sells cars in Japan, so sales of the Copen will likely be limited to its home market. There is some hope there, though – it’s been rumoured for a while that development of a new, bigger rear-wheel drive Copen is a joint venture with Toyota on a production version of 2015’s S-FR concept, and possibly even Suzuki on a reborn Cappuccino. If even one of these cars makes it to Europe, then there’s hope yet for the truly fun, affordable sports car on our shores.