Welcome to Goo-Net Find of the Week, a new series in which we pretend we’re not procrastinating on a Friday afternoon by idly browsing the coolest online used car platform in the world, Japan’s Goo-Net Exchange.
Welcome back to the fruits of our weekly procrastination session on Goo-Net Exchange, Japan’s infinitely cool used car listings site. This week, we’ve found a car that, despite its dowdy looks, is arguably the Toyota GR Yaris of 25 years ago – the Daihatsu Storia X4.
If it looks familiar, it’s because the Storia was sold in Britain as the Sirion, where we received a couple of surprisingly hot versions, including the all-wheel drive Rally4. Nothing quite as hot as the X4, though.
Daihatsu Storia X4 – side
The X4 was designed expressly to be turned into a rally car, hence it only coming in a plain white colour with an ultra-basic interior – the assumption was that it would be liveried up and stripped out.
That’s also why it had a lightly astonishing powertrain. The engine was a meagre 713cc four-cylinder, but with the help of a turbocharger plus a forged crankshaft and pistons, it was knocking out 118bhp. That meant that, unless our maths is spectacularly wrong, Daihatsu was selling a car making 165bhp per litre, right around the time we were all busy being astonished by the Honda S2000’s 124bhp per litre. It only weighed 840kg, too – that’s around 140bhp per tonne.
Daihatsu Storia X4 – rear
Not only that, but the Storia X4 was all-wheel drive and had limited-slip diffs on both axles. Where have we heard that before? Oh yeah, on the GR Yaris, a car that enthusiasts have spent the last few years fawning over for its rally-bred nature and the huge amount of power it makes from a tiny engine.
Frankly, it surprises us that the X4’s not better known. Maybe it was because it was a JDM rarity, or maybe because its literally disposable looks disguise what a little beast it is – on this example we’ve found, the only giveaways are the single racing seat, a couple of extra gauge pods, the Momo wheel and the aftermarket rims.
Daihatsu Storia X4 – interior
Speaking of the example we’ve found, it’s located in Chiba, part of Tokyo’s urban sprawl, and has covered an indicated 150,000km – around 93,200 miles. The seller is asking for ¥1.26 million which, incredibly, works out at around £6350.
For a bona fide ’90s rally homologation special with an utterly astonishing engine, we’re really struggling to see the catch here. Well, apart from having to import it. And source parts. And explain to people why you’ve gone to the bother of shipping a small, innocuous-looking white Daihatsu all the way from Japan.
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