Jorma Taccone was two days out of major spinal and pelvic surgery, loaded on painkillers, when he picked up his phone and started browsing for Japanese-market cars. Most people in that condition order regrettable amounts of late-night pizza. Taccone bought a 1996 Daihatsu Atrai kei van.
The Lonely Island member — one-third of the comedy trio behind “I’m on a Boat” and “Dick in a Box” alongside Andy Samberg and Akiva Schaffer — told the story while doing press for his new dark comedy, Over Your Dead Body. The tale is almost too perfect for a group that built its career on committing fully to absurd premises.
The Atrai is an eighth-generation model, identifiable by its chunky grille with integrated round fog lights. It’s a right-hand-drive Japanese domestic market people mover, the kind of vehicle designed to navigate Tokyo’s narrowest streets and squeeze into parking spaces that would make a Smart car sweat. It is, by any rational American standard, tiny and impractical, which is precisely the point.
But Taccone didn’t stop at buying the van. One of the orderlies at his hospital, Raniel Clark, happened to run a vehicle wrap business on the side. Clark covered the entire Daihatsu in a dragon-themed livery, transforming an already ridiculous vehicle into something that stops traffic for entirely different reasons.
On a recent episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers podcast, Samberg recounted taking the van out for a spin through Manhattan. He and Taccone piled in with two friends after dinner and hit the West Village on a Saturday night, blasting dancehall reggae through the streets.
“Every single block we went down, people were laughing and pointing and smiling,” Samberg said. The reaction was universal and immediate — a dragon-wrapped kei van rolling through lower Manhattan is the kind of thing that cuts through even New York City’s legendary indifference to spectacle.
Samberg’s assessment of the purchase was perfectly calibrated: “Ill-conceived and delightful, it defies all the rules; it’s not safe, but it’s just great.” He could have been describing half of The Lonely Island’s catalog.
Kei vehicles have been having a slow-burn moment in the United States. Colorado is set to legalize more kei cars in 2027, and enthusiast forums are thick with debates about importing these miniature Japanese workhorses. But the regulatory landscape remains a patchwork, and most states still treat kei trucks and vans with suspicion, limiting them to low-speed roads or banning them from highways altogether.
Taccone’s Atrai isn’t a policy statement. It’s a comedy bit with wheels. The man fell 20 feet off a ladder, had his spine and pelvis surgically rebuilt, and his first coherent act of consumer behavior was importing a van smaller than most American bathroom closets.
That’s the energy. A 30-year-old Daihatsu, wrapped in dragons, piloted through Greenwich Village by a guy who recently relearned how to walk. It’s the automotive equivalent of committing to the joke so hard it stops being a joke and becomes something genuinely charming.
The man famously never got to go on that boat. But on land, Jorma Taccone is covered.
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