This 1994 Suzuki Cara Is a 531-Unit Gullwing Kei Coupe Bidding on Cars & BidsA gullwing-doored, mid-engine kei car wearing a badge most Americans have never seen in person is currently up for grabs on Cars & Bids: a 1994 Suzuki Cara finished in red over a black-and-red interior, with a right-hand-drive cockpit, a 5-speed manual, and a metric instrument cluster that's a reminder this thing was never meant to cross the Pacific. Bidding sits at $9,300 with five bids logged and the auction clock ticking down, and the North Carolina-based dealer selling it has been fielding questions in the comments about everything from cabin ergonomics to that Mazdaspeed muffler hanging off the back.The Cara is essentially a badge-engineered twin of the Autozam AZ-1, a car Mazda and Suzuki co-developed to satisfy Japan's strict kei-car regulations while still delivering something genuinely sporting. Suzuki handled production, but only 531 examples wore the Cara's stylized "S" badge before the plug was pulled; combined output of the Cara and AZ-1 never topped 5,000 units across their brief 1992-1994 run. That scarcity, paired with scissor-style gullwing doors on a car roughly the size of a golf cart, is why the AZ-1/Cara has become a minor cult hero among kei-car collectors decades after Suzuki stopped building them.Under the rear glass sits a 657cc turbocharged inline-three good for 63 horsepower and 63 lb-ft of torque, numbers that sound almost comedic until you remember the whole car weighs about as much as a modern crossover's front bumper. Power spins the rear wheels through that 5-speed manual, and the tach reportedly pulls to a 9,000-rpm redline, matching the frantic, motorcycle-like character kei-car engineers were chasing. This particular example shows roughly 153,600 km, or about 95,500 miles, wears a clean Virginia title, and has picked up a handful of period-correct upgrades along the way, including 14-inch EXIS wheels, an aftermarket air intake, an F-1 Racing steering wheel, and that Mazdaspeed exhaust. The seller also lists a Suzuki Sport rear wing, manual split side windows, cloth upholstery, and air conditioning among the notable equipment, alongside cosmetic wear like swirls and dings, a cracked driver's side air vent, and some warping on the dashboard.AdvertisementAdvertisementBecause the Cara was never federalized or sold new in the United States, it lives in an odd corner of the collector market: too rare and too Japanese-market to show up in most price guides, yet increasingly desirable as 25-year import rules make more of them legal to bring stateside. A search of Hagerty's valuation tools turns up nothing for "Autozam" or "Suzuki Cara," and even a dedicated micro-car icon like the Honda Beat comes back with zero results, underscoring how far outside the mainstream these JDM kei sports cars still sit. Hagerty's price guide does track the segment's closest Western analogues, tiny curiosities like the BMW Isetta and Fiat Nuova 500 filed under its "Micro Car" body style, plus more mainstream Japanese sports cars such as the Nissan 300ZX and Acura NSX that do carry published values. Until Hagerty adds a line for the Cara and AZ-1, auctions like this one on Cars & Bids remain the best real-time gauge of what buyers will actually pay for one.That lack of a price-guide safety net hasn't dampened enthusiasm for the breed. Values for oddball JDM imports have climbed as more of them clear the 25-year import threshold, a trend we've tracked with other grey-market Japanese arrivals like a modified 1991 Acura NSX and a 34-years-owned Nissan 300ZX Twin Turbo, both of which found buyers through Hagerty Marketplace rather than a fixed price list. The Cara and AZ-1 sit even further out on the rarity curve than those cars, which is part of why bidding on this one is worth watching closely over the final days of the auction.Whoever wins this Cara will be buying one of the more improbable engineering exercises of the early 1990s, a gullwing-doored, turbocharged, 9,000-rpm kei coupe that Suzuki built barely more than 500 times. It's a fitting companion piece to other unconventional finds we've covered recently, like an SCCA Trans Am and GT1-spec Camaro that raced across three countries before landing on Cars & Bids, another reminder that the platform keeps surfacing vehicles that don't fit neatly into any conventional category. For now, the Cara remains live on Cars & Bids, with its fate resting on whoever is willing to pay up for one of the rarest kei cars ever sold.⚡️ Read the full article on MotoriousSign up for the Motorious Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.