Mazda Suitcase Car
prototype suitcase car
The Mazda Suitcase Car was a prototype suitcase vehicle created in 1991 by the Mazda company. The suitcase opened up to reveal a functioning three-wheeled gasoline-powered vehicle with working lights. The vehicle, which resembled a go-kart, was created by Mazda engineers and showcased in the United States and Europe at auto shows.
Background
The Mazda Suitcase Car never made it to production; it was built for car shows in Europe and the United States. The idea for the car came from Mazda engineer Yoshimi Kanemoto.
In 1991 a select group of seven engineers from Mazda’s manual transmission testing and research group including Kanemoto, created the vehicle for an internal company contest called Fantasyard. The contest challenged employees from different departments to design a creative product which is a moving machine.
The car had stubby fold-out handlebars with a twistgrip throttle like a motorcycle, a disk brake for the rear, a differential for wide turns, and three wheels (one in the front middle and two on the outer sides). The front and rear frames locked together to make the suitcase more rigid for when operating
The cost to build the prototype was US$5,000. In 1992 The Associated Press published a photo of a Mazda executive driving the suitcase car through Times Square ahead of the 16 April 1992 New York International Automobile Show.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Mazda Suitcase Car” as prototype suitcase car. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as prototype suitcase car. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q113163238. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1991 and 1992.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mazda Suitcase Car” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.