Espresso!

(Click to enlarge)

I guess I probably see a lot of cars here in Japan that would be considered 'funny' by American standards. However, there are so many keicars on the road that I don't even bat an eyelid when a 6-foot long van sporting ground effects and underbody lighting rolls by. However, the Honda Espresso (pictured above) is something special. As far as I've seen, it's the absolute smallest sports car known to man. Need a sense of scale? Simply look at either the 16 oz. water bottle on the dashboard or the license plate. No, those aren't oversized novelty items, people. While this particular photo was taken in Sapporo, there's actually one of these in the parking lot of the local pachinko parlor from time to time, although it has managed to elude the grasp of my camera thus far. I'm not sure exactly how the boys in the design department at Honda came up with this thing but my best guess is that the idea was borne out of a sincere desire to combine the two badass machines pictured below: