Kei Truck and Minibike Camping Should Be America's New Pastime

Screenshot: Mike festiva via YouTube

As an extremely large human, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t fit comfortably into any kei truck. I often find it tough to fit into cars designed for the American market and American buyers. None of this stops me from wanting a Suzuki Carry, a Honda Acty or a Subaru Sambar to take out into nature where the kei trucks’ low top speed won’t matter and get lost for a few days.

That’s just what YouTuber Mike festiva did with his friend, and, to sweeten the deal further, they brought minibikes to rip around on too. Watching them mountain goat the little trucks over massive tree roots and around big rocks in my home state of Washington just makes me think that this should be America’s official pastime. Forget baseball; we’ve had over a century of that. We should now encourage kids to learn to rock crawl in 660cc trucklets with diff locks.

[Fall car camping] light Kei truck 4×4 trip with mini bikes

Watching this extremely relaxing video is having the negative effect on me of making me look at JDM importer sites which has me realizing just how cheap kei trucks are to import. Of course, getting them registered in my adopted state of California might be a challenge, but who cares? I can figure it out. After all, I have most of a college degree rattling around my skull.

Adding minibikes – aka tiny, two-wheeled motorcycle-like devices with fat tires, little-to-no suspension and typically pull-start lawnmower-style engines – to the equation makes it so much better. These are low enough and slow enough to probably not kill yourself on, but torquey enough and with knobby enough tires to shred trails in the deep woods.

I love camping, and while setting a tent up in Malibu or schlepping out to the desert is awesome, I’ll always be nostalgic for summer in the Pacific Northwest and escaping suburbia every other weekend for places that still felt truly wild. I can’t even imagine how much more powerful this nostalgia would be if it involved kei trucks and minibikes (and beer).