A Hiroshima-based tuner called C.L. Link just turned a Suzuki Jimny into a miniature 1992 GMC Typhoon, and the result is so absurd it circles all the way back around to brilliant.
The tiny Jimny, a kei-class SUV that measures barely 11 feet long, now wears a boxy body kit with rectangular headlights and flared fenders designed to mimic the high-performance GMC that terrified Corvettes at stoplights three decades ago. The suspension drops one inch on Eibach springs and Bilstein dampers. The wheels look massive but are only 16s. That’s how small this thing is.
This is a corner of Japanese tuning culture that most Americans never see. Instead of boost and body kits, these builders dress up domestic microvehicles as foreign trucks. DAMD has already turned the Jimny into a Lancia Delta Integrale lookalike and a Renault 5 tribute.
C.L. Link, which normally builds overlanding rigs and lift kits for Jimnys and Land Cruisers, went a different direction entirely with this one.
The Typhoon project is a collaboration with Ryo Ishikawa, a fashion designer who has founded multiple Japanese brands. Ishikawa’s fingerprints are all over the aesthetic, leaning hard into 1990s nostalgia that resonates deeply in a country where American pop culture of that era still holds real currency.
C.L. Link is no garage operation. Their flagship build, the CL20-II, transforms the Jimny into a miniature overlanding rig that looks like it escaped from the pages of a children’s book. Their lift kits pass Japan’s notoriously strict shaken safety inspections, which is no small feat. The company knows the Jimny’s platform inside and out, which is probably why they felt comfortable doing something this playful with it.
The original GMC Typhoon ran from 1992 to 1993 and packed a turbocharged 4.3-liter V-6 making 280 horsepower with all-wheel drive. It could hit 60 mph in 5.3 seconds, which was supercar territory in its day. The Jimny’s turbocharged 660cc three-cylinder makes about 63 horsepower. The homage is spiritual, not mechanical.
What makes this sting a little is the reminder that Americans still cannot buy the Jimny. Suzuki pulled out of the U.S. market in 2012, and the current-generation Jimny sells briskly across Europe, Japan, and Latin America. You can buy one new in Mexico right now. Drive south from San Diego and you’ll find them on dealer lots, taunting anyone who crosses the border.
The concept of dressing up small vehicles as shrunken versions of larger, more aggressive trucks feels uniquely Japanese, but there’s no reason it couldn’t work here. A Ford Maverick wearing the face of a 1985 F-150. A Hyundai Venue done up as a K5 Blazer. The raw material exists. The imagination, apparently, does not.
American aftermarket culture still defaults to aggression, to blacked-out badges and fake hood scoops that signal menace rather than humor.
C.L. Link’s Typhoon Jimny weighs roughly 2,300 pounds and would get swallowed whole by a modern Suburban in any parking lot in Texas. But it has something most $80,000 lifted trucks lack entirely: a sense of humor about itself. The Japanese tuning scene keeps proving that fun does not require horsepower, displacement, or a six-figure price tag. It just requires someone willing to not take the whole enterprise so seriously.
Suzuki, for its part, still shows zero interest in returning to America.
Share this Story