Our Vision & Purpose
We are dedicated to showcasing the Subaru "Clover 4" or EN series engines as well as the vehicles they powered. We also want to provide valuable resources for enthusiasts, owners, mechanics, and curious individuals. Our content includes blogs, product reviews, maintenance guides, links to other great sites, groups, and tips for importing kei vehicles to the US.
Meet the Team!
Gearheads (and a responsible adult)
passionate about Subaru Kei vehicles.
The Journey™ , in a very much NOT abbreviated form
In the beginning…
I started driving in the late 1980s. I was taught to drive on two manual transmission vehicles (1984 Ford Tempo GLX and a 1987 Ford F-150 with the 4.9L straight six), and that has stuck with me to the present day. I had a friend in high school that introduced me to small cars, Robert Bowen, and he is to blame for all of the nonsense that has followed since. (His Dad had a classic Mini that I never actually saw, but we would sit and look through Min catalogs at school and “build” our ideal Minis!) Following High School, I left San Diego, CA, and was stationed in Hawai’i at (then) Marine Corps Air Station Kaneohe Bay. After getting out of the US Marine Corps in the later half of 1994 and moving back to San Diego, I had a 1985 Honda CRX (1st generation, not the Si or HF). This is not my exact car, but this is what mine looked like.
The CRX was a great little car, and I (and my then girlfriend, now wife) drove it all over Southern California when I was living there after getting out of the Marine Corps. That is probably what got me started on small cars. The funny part of that is that at 6’6” and now just under 300lbs, you’d think I’d be happier in a much, much larger vehicle. No, you’d be incorrect. I’m an outlier, and part of some weird inverse relationship when it comes to size of human / size of cars. I would end up owning a second CRX (1986) when I moved back to Hawai’I, then Classic Minis, from a couple of Mk 1 Cooper S cars (1964 Austin 1071cc & 1966 Austin 1275cc), a 1971 British Leyland 998cc car (left).
… and a later model SPi (Single Point, Fuel injected) JDM spec (Japanese Domestic Market) Rover Mini with air conditioning and everything! It would do freeway speeds with the air conditioning on. Should have never sold that one! (JDM Mini with Alli and I to the right.)
Minis came with 10, 12, and 13” wheels. Having driven all three, I can say that the 10 and 12” sizes were the best overall. In other words, “smol wheel, best wheel.” Especially in a small vehicle, a large wheel just adds unsprung weight, reduces the agility, and to me at least, looks goofy. In addition to looking weird, especially with the Minis, the extra sidewall of the smaller tires adds to a better ride.
Fast forward to 2021, and the beginning of the Kei journey!
We purchased our first Kei-jidōsha in late 2021. It was a green & white Subaru Sambar Dias Classic Van (KV3-5RC), and it has what I believe to be a rare factory option, a hydraulic wheelchair lift. On the left is the van when we saw it for the very first time in February 2022 - it was still in “jail”…ok, not really. The opening to the fence at the port was just to the left. (The KV3 has the multi-point fuel injected EN07F engine with the ECVT transmission.) There’s a whole story behind that vehicle that will be covered later.
There were two more Kei trucks that we owned, a 1996 and a 1995 Suzuki Carry. The green one was a dump truck! The red one went to a long time classic Mini friend in South Florida, and the Green Dump Truck went to a great family on Kaua'i here in Hawai'i. (I found a shot of both of them, so here 'ya go! Just a note, if you're a tall human like I am (6'6" or 198 cm), your knees will touch the dash when you drive.)
Following the purchase of the KV3, we decided that we loved the styling but wanted a manual transmission Sambar Dias Classic as well. We were shocked to find another Subaru Sambar Dias Classic (KV4-57N) with the carbureted EN07C engine and a 5 speed manual transmission (+ extra low gear) here already on the Island of O’ahu (Hawai’i) in August of 2022. The van was in good shape, so it joined the herd. This is that vehicle, which came to us with a 2” lift up springs from Forest Auto Factory in Japan and aftermarket 13” alloy wheels. All four wheels seem to have a slow air leak, so that may be something we address later.
In November 2022, we found and purchased a really nice 1997 Subaru Sambar Super Deluxe Classic pickup (KS3-3UM) that has the same EN07C engine as the KV4 van with the 5 speed manual transmission. It had 31,691 kms on it (19,681 miles) when we got it. The truck become my daily driver mid-July, 2024! Just because people ask all the time, as of early March 2025, I get an average of 32.4 mpg driving all over the island. I’ve changed the wheels to a 12x4” +42ET, 9-spoke Zack-209 wheels from Japan and a wooden steering wheel + gear shift knob.
Our latest purchase in October 2024 (for a while!) was this Subaru Vivio RX-R (KK4-38R). This vehicle was purchased in Nagoya from a private party and then transported to Kyoto where it is waiting with Yuichi, who you'll learn about later.
This one is going to be really fun, as it has the EN07X engine, which instead of SOHC (Single, overhead camshaft) has a DOHC (Dual, overhead camshafts), a supercharger connected to an intercooler, and a 9,000 rpm redline. If you're wondering just how fun, I got a chance to drive a good friend's RX-R for about an hour. Bought my own the next week. :) I was very fortunate to find one that was still being driven and just received it's two-year road license after the Shaken inspection in September of 2024.
The search for parts and a new-found passion!
Owning kei vehicles, for me specifically 1990s Subaru kei vehicles, has been a lot of fun. Much like the Minis that preceded them in my life, for some reason I’m just not afraid to work on them. The carbureted ones are dead simple. For the first time in my adult life, I actually enjoy working on cars. To this point in my life, that has not been the case.
Finding parts for vehicles that were never sold in the US and 25+ years old can be a bit of a challenge. There’s some stuff that can be sourced locally, like oil & air filters, spark plugs & wires, etc. The rest of the bits have to come from Japan, and we as a community are discovering that some of the items we need are NLA, or No Longer Available.
When it comes to the parts that are available, there is a very wide variance of prices. As an example, a cylinder head gasket that is available in Japan through Yahoo Auctions for $10 is being sold from a store in the US for eight times the price. Yes, the cost of shipping from Japan by airmail is expensive, but we think we can offer Subaru owners another choice. If you can afford to wait a while, you can save a lot of money, too!
(If you’re unfamiliar, the cylinder head gasket is flat, metal piece that is sandwiched between the cylinder block and the cylinder head, is made of metal, and is typically about 1mm thick. )
When it comes to parts, I get over 95% of my stuff from 500 Yen Shop. I started off buying parts from Yuichi Murakami back when we got our first van & trucks. He's always taken great care of me and been helpful and friendly. More on him later...
There was a subset of the Subaru Sambar, truck (and maybe van?) that were bought by the Japanese moving / freight company Akabou. They also have the cutest little mascot:
The specific modifications on the Akabou engines made it such that Subaru said they did not have to be rebuilt for 500,000 km (310,685.6 miles). These engines were very stout, especially considering a typical 1990s engine is probably going to need a rebuild after 150,000 miles. (Yes, some go longer than that, but some shorter, too!) To distinguish the Akabou engines, they were given a special valve cover like this, finished in a “crinkle red” texture:
If you’re a car person, car-adjacent, or know anything about performance at all, you will know that red is faster. Red is worth +5, maybe +10 horsepower. We don’t care that it was used to designate a heavy duty version of the engine and not a performance version… (As an aside to the Subaru folks, I swear it’s the same crinkle red that is used on the intake runners of the Subaru WRX STI version.)
The quest for the Akabou EN07 SOHC valve cover, and HULK SMASH!
Now we had a goal. We were going to find this damn valve cover for one of our Sambars. A quick search on eBay at the time of writing shows that you can get one for between a couple hundred USD and this one, for a great, bargain price. Don't worry, shipping is free!
This is absolute price-gouging bullshit. Yes, the Akabou valve cover for the EN07 engines is no longer available. When it was available, it was ~$92 USD in Japan. When I checked in mid 2024, they were going for a top price of $350+ shipping on eBay. Even that is just ridiculous and completely unacceptable in my view. These aren’t 1960s Ferraris that they made maybe 500 copies of, they were economical utility vehicles produced in Japan up to 34 years ago in the hundreds of thousands. These aren't R32 - R34 Nissan Skylines. Our parts do not cost this much.
Now I was pissed. (And at the time of writing, even more-so!) How is this hobby going to survive if the places that sell parts are greedy and gouge the shit out of people? Why the financial gatekeeping / barrier to entry? As we would say in the Marine Corps, this is “unsat” (un-satisfactory). Rather than just complain about it though, we’re going to do something about it!
Projekt EN07 fights its way out of the egg
Because I found my way into the Kei world from the Classic Mini scene, I have seen what is possible with proper aftermarket support. Leaning on that and my passion for small cars, I decided this was my chance to do something about it.
I decided at first that I was going to create a website that documented my quest for a little more power out of the EN07C engine. They were rated (at the crankshaft, so no drivetrain attached) at 38.8 hp. This is fine on flat ground and going downhill, but going uphill is a struggle. For my 1997 KS3 truck and 1995 KV4 van, that horsepower rating was a long time ago. The truck has really low kilometers on it (just over 36,000 km as of now (~22,400 miles), and the van has around 131,000 km (81,000-ish miles). Having already experienced the “joy” of owning old vehicles with unknown service histories, I knew that I was going to have to fix stuff, so I knew that I wanted to have a history of the work I’d done with steps / directions / photos to show other people how to do it as well. I thought It’d be fun to journal my trials, tribulations, and generally unsolicited opinions on all things Subaru Kei. Oh, and sell fun shirts & merchandise, because I have lots of ideas that make at least *me* laugh.
I purchased the projekt-eno7.com domain and started trying to create content so that when the site finally does launch it won’t be a barren wasteland. A good friend, Jon, (from the Mini days here in Hawai’i!) helped me out with a logo. Importantly, Jon stressed that it had to be *my* brand, not me riding off of the Subaru coattails. The omission of the manufacturer name and logo is something we thought about, and definitely not a legal battle I want to fight. The red is borrowed from the Subaru Technica International red, and the “middle of the O” in EN07 is to represent the Subaru Clover 4. The difference in color between the text and the clover is intentional.
Along with the blog, reviews, resources, and merchandise I wanted to have for the site, it finally hit me: We’re starving for parts. A definite non-zero percentage of the stuff we need to keep our vehicles running is just not produced anymore, and if you’re lucky you’ll find some part that came off an equally old vehicle. It may get you by, but it’s not sustainable in the long term.
It was decided that I was going to start 3D printing parts, especially NLA stuff. There’s a whole process I’ve got in mind, but I haven’t “broken ground” on that part yet. I’m going to use a service to print the parts that can print them from anything from a polyurethane type substance to Titanium. Now we just need to test some stuff out. In addition to the NLA parts, I’ve got some hair branded ideas for “fun stuff,” too.
I have been talking with one of my car buddies, Matt, about my ideas. He’s a Kei person as well, and owns a black Vivio RX-R that he let me drive. I wanted one before, and after driving his car for an hour or so, the hook was set. :) Matt said one evening as I was explaining my ideas, that this was “Ikigai.” I had heard the term, but forgotten what it meant. Matt said, “It’s a reason for being. There’s a need, there’s something you are interested in, and you can sustain yourself doing it!” The kanji for the word is 生き甲斐, according to wiktionary.org as “Compound of 生きる (ikiru, “to live, to exist”) + 甲斐 (kai, “worth, value”). The kai changes to gai as an instance of rendaku (連濁).” (One of my friends that speaks and reads Japanese, please check me on that!)
One thing that has been popping up in my brain time and time again is that there are definite “sides of the road” that I don’t want to venture outside of. I have no desire to get the ever living shit sued out of our LLC by Subaru North America, or the parent company, Fuji Heavy Industries (Subaru Corp?). There’s still a bunch to sort out on that front, legalese to complete, rules to check, etc. I did figure out how we’re going to market those parts though, and that is under the name “Potato Speed.” I can see your furled brow. Your questioning look. According to the “Know your meme” website, it started off as a joke (circa 2008) from YouTubers apologizing for their video looking like it had been, “Recorded with a potato.” Since then it has been applied to many things. I think potato + anything is funny, I didn’t want a name that referenced Subaru in any way, and thus - potato speed was born as well! That’ll be the parts / performance arm of Projekt EN07. We’re working on an appropriately silly logo for Potato Speed. We’ve already contacted a couple of companies to see about possible collaborations. The potato. Is rolling.
I first met Yuichi Murakami who lives in Kyoto Japan (500YenShop.com / MKTJapan.com) for about 3 years now. We’ve developed a friendship over that time, and as of the end of October, 2024, I officially became a part of his operation. If you're looking for cars of any type in Japan or maybe parts for your JDM ride, I can most certainly help take the stress out of the process. Yuichi has treated me well over the years, and I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think he'd continue, nor if I couldn't provide the same service, I wouldn't do it. Feel free to email me there andy@mktjapan.com or text me/ call / WhatsApp at (808) 767-5665.
What does the future hold? We don't know. Whatever happens though, I hope I can help some people, make some others laugh, and support my small car habit!
Community Involvement
Check with Subaru Hawai'i to see about participating in their events?