Toyoji Motooka

Because the door couldn't slide far enough back

To be loved even more by parents raising children, the second-generation Tanto had a power sliding door with no left B-pillar. A rear sliding door had been decided first, but because the car is short, the door could not slide back as far as they wanted. So they made it pillarless to widen the opening. It had also been decided from the start to build a welfare-spec version, and that was taken into account too. The previous model had been quite a hit and other makers were expected to enter the market, so Motooka developed it believing that the product had to be made much stronger to keep the momentum.