1998 Daihatsu HiJet 4WD#BUC43210

Our stock includes this 1998 Daihatsu HiJet 4WD — a right-hand-drive Japanese import. Drive on this HiJet 4WD is four-wheel drive. 10 photographs of this specific vehicle are on this listing.

Background: the HiJet 4WD

Daihatsu is Toyota's small-vehicle specialist and the Hijet is the product it has spent longest refining — sixty-plus years of iteration on a single idea, and it shows in how resolved the details are. Daihatsu supplies the Hijet to other makers for rebadging — Toyota since 2011, Subaru since 2012 — and it was licence-built abroad as the Piaggio Porter in Italy and the Asia Towner in Korea. Daihatsu sold the Hijet in an unusually wide spread of factory body styles — flatbed, PTO dump, panel van, canvas top, the extended-cab Jumbo from 1983 and the four-seat Deck Van from 1988 — because Japanese buyers specified them for particular trades.

What is on file for this HiJet 4WD

It shows 33119 on the clock. That reading of 33119 came to us without a unit attached, and we have left it exactly as found.

How this 1998 HiJet 4WD is put together

It runs a 660cc engine. The 1998 HiJet 4WD came with a 5-speed manual gearbox, and that is what this one has. With four-wheel drive the useful part is traction at a standstill — getting a loaded bed moving on grass, gravel or mud rather than spinning one wheel.

Living with a HiJet 4WD

Farms, vineyards, ranches, grounds crews and building sites are where HiJet 4WDs end up in the US, for the same reasons they ended up there in Japan — Japanese sources describe the kei truck as a necessity for moving tools, crops and catch. A 1998 build date puts this one well past the 25-year federal import threshold. It is listed at $7,900.