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Honda can't build it cheaply, so it has to be the roomiest
With the strong yen after the Lehman shock making exports difficult, Honda needed a car that would sell in Japan. In kei cars, where price decides everything, Honda could not build cheaply. So it set targets of the world's smallest engine compartment and the largest cargo space within kei car rules, bringing the minivan thinking that began with the Odyssey to a kei car. In his own words, a "mini-minivan." It was developed with a sense of crisis that Honda would be in trouble if it didn't sell.
