A 657cc Suzuki Carry Climbed to 12,800 Feet on Colorado's Alpine Loop

Most people assume a 657cc Suzuki Carry is for grocery runs and barn chores. Then a guy named Alex McCulloch from the Life's Too Short For Boring Cars channel pointed a 1992 Suzuki Carry at the Alpine Loop in Colorado's San Juan Mountains, climbed it to 12,800 feet at Engineer Pass, and finished the entire 63 mile route. The truck made it. Some of the Jeeps and Tacomas it shared the trail with did not. That changes the conversation about what a kei truck can actually do in the Rockies.

What the Alpine Loop Actually Demands

The Alpine Loop is not a casual scenic drive. The 63 mile route through Lake City, Silverton, and Ouray crosses two summits above 12,000 feet, runs over loose shale, climbs grades steep enough to scrape long wheelbase trucks, and at multiple points narrows to single track where pulling over for oncoming traffic means backing up a quarter mile to a wide spot. The BLM Alpine Triangle Recreation Area rates the loop as a high clearance four wheel drive only route. The fact that anybody attempted it in a kei truck at all is a story. The fact that the Carry finished is a different kind of story.

What this terrain rewards is short wheelbase and patience. A Carry has roughly 76 inches between the axles, closer to a quad than a full size truck. Approach angles embarrass anything with a long front overhang, and the flat underbody clears steep transitions that scrape a Tacoma. The downside is suspension travel. Five inches of front travel is fine for a fire road and rough on a real shelf trail.

The Modifications That Made It Possible

McCulloch did not run the Carry stock. He fitted 25 inch tires (up from the factory 12 inch), added a two inch lift kit, stiffer springs, muddy bottom shocks, a roll cage, skid plates, a swapped front bumper, and auxiliary lighting. None of that is exotic. Most of it is in our off road mods guide, which walks through the same lift kit and skid plate options for any 25 year old Suzuki Carry or Honda Acty.

The 25 inch tires are the single biggest mod for a job like the Alpine Loop. As SuperCar Blondie covered in their writeup of the build, going up to 25s gives enough sidewall to absorb sharp rocks without pinch flatting and raises the differential clear of the worst high spots. The trade off is engine load. Bigger tires means more rotational mass, which means slower acceleration and a small altitude penalty on top of what the engine is already paying.

What Altitude Does to a 660cc Engine

This is the part of the story most viewers miss. The Carry made the climb to 12,800 feet, but it was working. McCulloch noted on camera that the engine felt like it was about to stall at multiple points on the climb to Engineer Pass. That is not a bad tune. That is physics.

A naturally aspirated 660cc engine loses roughly three percent of its power per 1,000 feet of elevation. At Engineer Pass, the Carry was operating on about 62 percent of its sea level output. The 35 horsepower the F6A makes at sea level becomes about 22 horsepower above 12,000 feet. That is enough to climb most grades in low range, but it is barely enough to climb the worst pitches on the Alpine Loop, and it requires the driver to manage RPM aggressively. Carbureted Carrys from the early 1990s suffer the most because the fixed jetting that runs perfectly at sea level runs rich at altitude. As r/keitruck owners have documented for years, anybody operating a carbureted kei truck above 6,000 feet should look at altitude compensation jets or a Weber conversion. Fuel injected post 1994 trucks compensate automatically and lose less power as a result.

This matters for anyone in Colorado considering an import. The state legalized kei trucks in 2025 under HB 25-1281, which we covered in our SEMA Texas and Colorado wins recap. New Colorado owners are buying with mountain use in mind, and the carbureted versus fuel injected distinction is the single most important spec for high elevation operation. Our Colorado state law page covers what is legal and the legalization timeline.

Where a Kei Truck Beats a Full Size 4x4 in the Mountains

Width is the underrated advantage. The Carry is about 55 inches wide. A Toyota Tacoma is 75 inches wide. On a shelf trail with traffic in both directions, that 20 inch difference is the gap between pulling over and backing down a half mile of single lane road to find a turnout. The Carry can also turn around on terrain that nothing larger can use, because the turning radius is closer to a quad than a truck. Hagerty's coverage of kei vehicles in the US market notes this width advantage repeatedly. For tight terrain, a kei truck is genuinely more capable than a full size half ton, and that gap is what makes a Carry a real alternative to a side by side, not a substitute for one.

When a Kei Truck Is the Wrong Tool

Long high speed approaches. The Alpine Loop trailheads are a 200 mile drive from Denver including interstate stretches where a 55 mph kei truck is a hazard. McCulloch trailered the Carry to the trail because running it on I 70 at altitude with 25 inch tires would have been miserable. The Carry's gearing was not designed for sustained 70 mph cruising on a 4,000 foot grade. Towing is the other constraint: about 750 pounds in the bed and effectively zero trailer capacity. The pre purchase checklist covers the use cases worth optimizing for before you spend the money.

The Bottom Line

A 1992 Suzuki Carry on 25 inch tires made it through one of the most demanding 4x4 routes in Colorado, climbed to 12,800 feet, and embarrassed plenty of full size trucks that doubted it. That is a meaningful data point for anyone in the Rockies trying to figure out whether a kei truck is a real off road platform or a novelty. The answer is real platform, with caveats around altitude tuning and highway approach. If you are looking for a Colorado ready Carry, our dealer directory lists the importers who supply the state, and the The Drive kei truck coverage has tracked the wider Colorado scene as it has grown post legalization. The rest of the video library has more on what kei trucks can and cannot do in the real world.