It was only a mat­ter of time before the new gen­er­a­tion of Japan­ese hybrid cars found their way into the tun­ing and styling shops of the world. I give you the Tommy Kaira Prius and Insight, from the leg­endary shop that gave us the Tommy Kaira  M20B WRX STI, Z33 and ZZ.

[Ed: I’d say it’s a def­i­nite improve­ment, but I also have to ask why. Tommy Kaira is bet­ter known for sports and per­for­mance car makeovers and tun­ing. Times are tough with the drought in per­for­mance cars from Japan­ese carmakers ]

Tommy Kaira Prius

Tommy Kaira Insight

More:

• Tommy Kaira Prius
• Tommy Kaira Insight
• Tommy Kaira on Wikipedia

The Kiza­shi appeared at Frank­furt not long ago, and hot on it’s heels comes the Kiza­shi 2, which looks to be either a crossover or soft roader.

�Kiza­shi 2.0

The car appar­ently drops the 2.0L 4cyl TDi expected in the Kiza­shi 1.0. Instead Kiza­shi 2.0 gets a 3.6L GM V6 and 6 speed auto­matic, and may or may not be a hybrid vehi­cle. It’s unknown at this point wether the Kiza­shi 2.0 would sport the AWD sys­tem slated for the Kiza­shi 1.0 concept.

It’s also unknown why the two dis­parate vehi­cle con­cepts hold the same name in the first place. It may sim­ply be a ‘style name’ rather than actual vehi­cle name.

[Source:� Car­a­disiac]