Daihatsu Motor Co., Ltd. is a Japanese manufacturer of cars, well known for its smaller models and off-road vehicles. Many of its models are also known as kei jidosha (or kei cars) in Japan.
The name "Daihatsu" is a combination of the first kanji (Chinese character, also shared in Japanese language) for Osaka (大) and the first of the word "engine manufacture" (発); when put together they are pronounced "dai hatsu". (In Japanese, it is pronounced as Da-i-ha-tsu, NOT Dai-hat-su, but in practice, even in Japanese, the name is often slurred and doesn't sound too different than the latter pronunciation.)
Daihatsu was formed in 1951 as successor organisation to Hatsudoki, and by the 1960s had started importing cars to Europe, although it did not enjoy any major sales success until well into the 1980s.
