Kei Car Sales (By Brand) : 2005-09

The most popular model at the time, the Suzuki Wagon R

After WW II, the Japanese introduced a special category of car called the kei Car, which means in this context light. It got locals into a car and proved a popular innovation. Over the years, rules governing the genre have changed to maintain their success. Models are shared between brands for cost sharing advantages. In 2014, benefits were scaled back and sales were somewhat reduced but not by much. In the first of a brief series looks at which brands are big in the kei car world.

2005-09. The king of the kei car was Daihatsu with all but a few percent of sales making up the brand's registrations in Japan. Suzuki came in a strong second, with it's Wagon R the most popular kei car of the time. Then came Honda and Nissan, the former reducing its sales and the latter improving.

Total kei car penetration around this time was 31-35%. Surprisingly, Toyota does not take advantage of this category, despite it dominating total sales. Toyota holds just over 30% of the total market and since that is about 65% of sales, that translates to nearly half the regular, non-kei car registrations. More on that in another article.

Brand / Year	2009	2008	2007	2006	2005
Daihatsu	466,780	504,938	481,260	460,484	433,050
Kei %	98	99	98	96	97
Suzuki	420,562	454,793	450,048	464,036	467,171
Kei %	87	85	85	85	86
Honda	133,820	165,562	185,510	234,720	199,748
Kei %	22	28	32	36	30
Nissan	113,350	115,388	126,821	109,514	84,293
Kei %	22	20	21	17	11
Mitsubishi	65,975	82,438	92,078	124,558	98,564
Kei %	55	57	54	64	56
Subaru	44,272	58,479	67,578	70,868	62,720
Kei %	37	41	44	43	37
Mazda	38,639	45,329	43,763	43,374	44,059
Kei %	22	22	20	20	18
Toyota			1	28	1,329
Kei %			0	0	0
Total	1,283,742	1,427,279	1,447,413	1,507,943	1,391,270
Kei %	34	35	35	34	31