Did you guess what it is then? We don’t blame you if you didn’t, but behind this enormous cast iron style grille is…
…a Toyota RAV4. Yep, the Mitsuoka Buddy is based on Toyota’s mid-level crossover SUV, but restyled to give it a look that’s straight out of the Everglades. Honestly, they may as well have gone the whole way and called it the ‘Yankmaster Canyonero’.
Even the pictures leave nothing to the imagination when it comes to what inspired this thing. Pure Americana. The Buddy has a completely restyled grille evocative of the Chevrolet K5 Blazer, including lots of metalwork and stacked quad headlamp housings. The bonnet and wings are re-profiled for a butch, flat edged look, and around the back it’s even more…erm…interesting.
The whole of the rear panel is replaced to incorporate a polished chrome bumper strip, above which is a contrasting panel bearing the Mitsuoka name. Toyota’s taillight units are replaced by upright clusters which, again, have an American vibe.
From the side the only major difference is the addition of proper chunky all terrain tyres (optionally by the look of things), wrapped around steel wheels with chrome hubcaps. The RAV4’s standard squared wheel arches suit the flavour of this makeover left just as they are.
There’s a good chance you haven’t heard of Mitsuoka but the company has actually sold a model in the UK before, a re-bodied Mazda MX-5 designed to look like an old British roadster of the Morgan school. It was fairly monstrous, frankly – and not in a good way. An unusual pastiche of the 1950s grafted onto a modern roadster. And it cost £55,000.
To be honest we actually like the look of the Buddy. Slightly chintzy, yes, but bold and at least coherent in its design. We don’t have any pictures of the interior but we’d be surprised if it doesn’t at least feature some lovely wood paneling for that 1970s station wagon effect. And definitely a massive ashtray and some oversized cup holders. Also possibly a gun rack.
There are no mechanical changes either, with Mitsuoka offering the standard Toyota drivetrains, those being a 2.0-litre petrol engine or a 2.5-litre petrol-electric hybrid, the latter four-wheel drive.
Sadly it’s not coming to the UK, although there’s a small chance it could if Toyota dealerships get involved in the same way that Mazda ones did to flog a few Roadsters. We can only guess at the price, but given that the Roadster cost as much as about three base MX-5s, this could in theory hit the dizzy heights of £70-80,000. Indeed.
Keyword: Can you guess what the Mitsuoka Buddy is based on?