may 19, 1983 - 1983 KURUMA Kaisha
Sutaffu 850
Description:
The Sutaffu 850 is Kuruma's debut vehicle, so lets look at the whole story.
Founded in 1982, Kuruma Kaisha is the most recent automaker to emerge from Japan. Their main focus is affordability, but not just being cheap, but trying to squeeze as much as possible within the budget, making Kuruma's cars a good bang for the buck, usually.
The company was born out of neccessity by founder Hinata Kurosawa (b. 1950). He was born and raised in Takayama (Gifu, Japan), but tragically his mother passed away due to complications during birth. His father needed to juggle multiple jobs to make ends meet so Hinata had to rely on himself from an early age.
Takayama is known for it's strong woodworking tradition, and Hinata trained to become a carpenter. He got a job at his father's friend's contracting company and put the majority of his income into the household to relieve his father from his immense workload. However, in 1977, Hinata's father passed away in a work accident.
Hinata, then 22 years of age, couldn't bear to stay in Takayama any longer. He didn't really have any friends, was a only child and no relatives to speak of. He longed for a fresh start. He had the means to do that now, as he had inherited a rather large sum of money through his father's life insurance, where he was the sole beneficiary. By the end of 1977, Hinata sold his childhood home and moved to Tokyo to start his own contracting company, simply called "Hinata".
After a few good years with his company in Tokyo, Hinata had spotted a need. He was not happy with the selection of small utility vehicles and felt they were too expensive for what they were. So he simply took the matters into his own hand. in 1982 He formed a sister company, named Kuruma Kaisha, focusing on making his own line of small utility vehicles, and out came the Sutaffu 850. It's a small little boxy vehicle designed to haul resources between places in the city. Engine is a 850cc push rod inline 3 cylinder, making roughly 35 horsepower. In total the Sutaffu only weighs around 570kg and the best part? Back in 1983, it only cost $3.200, miles cheaper then anything else on the market.
Originally the Sutaffu was only meant as an "in house" vehicle for his contracting company, but after word spread, interest grew exponentially and Hinata realized he needed to capitalize on this. Needless to say, they sold in masses and quickly became a standard throughout all of Asia, gaining the company a lot of revenue in the process. Due to the Sutaffu's great success, Hinata decided to continue the development of Kuruma Kaisha.
To begin with, the focus was on utility/work-focused vehicles, but later on they started to dip their toes into the commercial market. At 70 years of age, Hinata is still the acting CEO of both Keruma and his contracting company and is at good health, which he credits his active lifestyle and claims he'll stay at the helm as long as his health allows.
Price at launch in 1983:
$3.200
Added to timeline:
Guffi's Automation World (Work in Progress)
A timeline of all the cars in my Automation Universe. This i...
Date:
Images:
![]()
