How Naoki Sakai Saved Automotive Design with Puff Pants

How Naoki Sakai Saved Automotive Design with Puff Pants

​By Robert Korczynski

For the 40th anniversary of the release of the Nissan Be-1 concept car at the 1985 Tokyo Motor Show, an automotive profile written by Alex Kwanten was published on hagerty.com in December of 2025. The piece covered the entire Pike Factory lineup, including the Pao and the Figaro, and talked to Nissan engineers, not Naoki Sakai. The article focused heavily on the internal staff's engineering and assembly efforts, directly quoting Yoshiro Kobata, who led the design team at the factory. In the profile, Kobata noted, "No one imagined it would become popular," adding that his crew was trepidatious about public reaction to a car hastily prepped for the show.

​While the article highlighted the frantic scramble to build the cars, it downplays the outside creative spark that made the project possible in the first place, Naoki Sakai and Water Design, unlike every other article that has been written over the last 20 years talking about the Pike cars and the Be-1. When shared on the global Be-1 Facebook page, a member posted the piece and noted that it contained information that he had never heard before. I responded that the reason that he had never heard these things before is because they weren't true. I argued that the article was wrong, that Sakai's role was essential, and that without it, Nissan had never shown the ability to create any emotive designs on its own. I said that Sakai was responsible for all of retrofuturism in auto design and for all of the New Beetles, PT Cruisers, HHRs, Audi TTs, Fiat 500s and BMW Mini Coopers that have ever been produced, and that Nissan designers and engineers have absolutely no right to take any credit for retrofuturism in auto design.

​My comment triggered an immediate, defensive reaction from the Nissan engineer featured in the article. Joining the Facebook thread, the engineer responded to me, doubling down on his claims and stating that all Naoki Sakai ever did for the Be-1 was hand the engineering team collages of puff pants. These collages were derived from the high-fashion work Sakai had been designing long before he ever started working with industrial car designers, and it is a testament to his genius that he funneled that vision into the Be-1. In an attempt to pretend that he wasn't trying to steal credit for Sakai's genius, he called him "Sakai-san" out of "respect."

​The article itself exposed the sharp limits of the Nissan engineering team's design creativity by featuring a photograph of the original design proposal that lost to the Be-1, which had been submitted by an internal team of Nissan designers under the age of 30. To the best of my knowledge, I had never seen a photograph of their submission before, even though I knew it existed. Without Sakai-san involved, this in-house Nissan submission was made of all flat angular panels and sharp edges, looking like a futuristic cybertruck, with nothing round at all. I told the Nissan engineer that their submission that lost to the Be-1 showed all of their design abilities, and that even after working with Sakai for the three Pike cars, while he was off working with Suzuki to produce the SW-1 (which was the talk of the 1991 Tokyo Motor Show), the Nissan engineers again produced something that looked like it was made with cardboard and duct tape with big flat side panels, the S-Cargo. I pointed out that Naoki Sakai came back to Nissan and designed the Rasheen as well.

​That was my Exhibit A and my Exhibit B to the Nissan engineer. I told the Nissan engineer that it does not matter if all Sakai-san handed them were collages of puff pants, because he provided the special sauce that Nissan's internal staff completely lacked. If all Sakai-san handed them were collages of puff pants, it highlights his genius because puff pants are designed within a distinct Japanese form. Because Sakai-san's design aesthetic is retrofuturism, which can also be translated as future memory, his puff pants may have used more modern fabrics than were traditional, but no matter what, Japanese puff pants are anchored in what is considered the sarrouel style of Japanese fashion history. Featuring garments that are explicitly balloon-like, gathered tightly at the waist and ankles but ballooning out dramatically through the legs, much like flowing parachute pants or high-fashion harem pants.

​By the time the Be-1 arrived, the global industry was sitting on 10 consecutive years of completely boxy cars. That rigid styling approach worked perfectly fine for companies like Volvo or Mercedes-Benz, where a solid, chiseled rectangular shape was their signature brand look, but for everyone else on the planet, the style was completely uninspired. Virtually the only exceptions to this global rule were heritage-driven brands like Porsche and Jaguar, where the signature look remained bound to classic curves, as there was no such thing as an angular Porsche or an angular Jaguar unless you fast-forward to the crossover era, when both Porsche and Jaguar produced crossovers that looked identical to every other vehicle on the road, especially in white.

​There are no straight lines on a Be-1; it is entirely made up of curves. Unlike the Pao, which embraces some military flat panels, the Figaro has mostly rounded lines, like the Be-1, but is a convertible with an ostentatious use of chrome, while the Be-1 has all black accents. The entire global design trend of creating boxy cars was broken by the Be-1 with its overtly rounded features, including its iconic round headlights and Porsche-like round hood featuring structural lines that project directly back from the headlights. Looking closely at the geometry, it becomes undeniably clear: those raised styling lines are literally two legs of ballooning sarrouel pants laying on either side of the hood, with each round headlight stuck right into the end of the pant leg. This repeated oval theme defines the entire machine; it sits on the split bumper, and it forms the distinct cutout shape of the front seat headrests, mirroring the inflated contours of fabric legs.

​This exact same oval repetition of form anchors the back end of the car, and rather than relying on standard blocky rectangular lenses, the rear layout has a precise vertical stack of three individual ovals on either side. There are three different lights for the reverse, turn signals, and brakes, using the same repetition of form found in the front marker lights and the headrest cutouts. The entire point of the Be-1 is that it introduced this bulbous, parachute-pants aesthetic to a boxy, square world. All of retrofuturism is based upon Naoki Sakai's puff pants collages. Jelly bean cars, New Beetles, Fiat 500s, and BMW Mini Coopers are all the direct result of the Nissan Be-1 and puff pants.

​The Be-1 has no chrome. It features black rubber headlight surrounds, black bumpers, and an exterior constructed entirely out of black rubber and molded plastic trim pieces. There is absolutely no chrome on the outside of a Be-1, with the solitary exception of the small silver radio antenna mounted on the pillar.

​The Figaro, by contrast, shifted into a highly stylized, modern luxury presentation that put gleaming metal at the center of its identity. Though sharing a similar overall footprint, it focused heavily on premium chrome embellishments, highlighted by a prominent, continuous chrome line that runs all the way back from the headlights, tracking along the upper edge of the hood, and wrapping completely around the waistline of the vehicle. This striking contrast shows how the lineage evolved, yet the foundational blueprint began with the inflated, bulbous aesthetic of the Be-1. All of retrofuturism is puff pants. Jelly bean cars, New Beetles, Fiat 500s, and BMW Mini Coopers are all puff pants.

​Because the global industry had to respond to the Be-1, the subsequent corporate jelly bean era of cars that became rounded starting in 1993 was the mass market response to puff pants. No matter what, the only difference between the Be-1, offered in its own four distinct colors, and the Pao, offered in its four completely different colors, is the external skin. They are built on the mass-marketed Nissan K10 March in the domestic market and K10 Micra in Europe, running the exact same drivetrain and mechanical chassis. If you open the hood of a Be-1 and a Pao, you are looking at the same naturally aspirated, carbureted MA10S engine block that looks like a basic, analogue 1970s engine. As the Hagerty profile confirms, the vehicle's underlying architecture was as simple as it gets, using a "987-cc, feedback-carbureted four-cylinder engine with all of 51 horsepower."

​This ultimate technical reality proves that when collectors completely love the Be-1, but have no interest in the styling of the Pao, or vice versa, they are responding entirely to the emotional resonance of the visual art superimposed on the skin of a basic boxy, small commuter car. I would never try to collect a base Nissan Micra or March K10, because left to its own devices, all Nissan engineers were ever able to design was the exact same square, boxy commuter things. The factory engineers sold this exact same platform globally as a severe, completely flat, square, boxy thing that looked exactly like a Ford Escort or a Dodge Omni from the early 1980s.

​In fact, other than maybe small differences in overall size, it would be incredibly hard to determine the difference at a glance between a K10 Micra, a Ford Escort, or a standard Dodge Omni unless you could physically stand them right next to each other; in photographs, they are completely indistinguishable from one another. If I were to have to select an ugly little box car or a hatchback from that era, I would collect a first-generation, Carroll Shelby-designed Dodge Omni GLH, specifically the naturally aspirated version, purely for what that boxy shape represents in the historical context of Shelby's tuning genius.

​Conversely, across Europe where the K10 Micra was sold, dedicated clubs and car communities actively celebrate and preserve these classic hatchbacks because they are famously fun to drive, but for an enthusiast focused purely on aesthetic form, the standard factory layout remains completely square. It took until 1992 or 1993, with the arrival of the next-generation K11, before the factory engineers finally relented and the whole world went jelly bean.

​The Figaro, however, represents a completely separate engineering path that does not share the same side profile at all. The Figaro is designed to look low, long, and flat, featuring a much lower hood line than its upright siblings. It is a true convertible, which sets it completely apart from the Be-1 and Pao, which only offered a weird sort of pullback canvas accordion roof that leaves the metal side frames completely intact all the way to the back. Pop the hood of a Figaro and it looks completely and utterly different from the Be-1 and Pao. Nissan ditched the simple, carbureted commuter internals for its high-performance March Turbo package. Equipped with the turbocharged, electronically fuel-injected MA10ET engine block and a complex Electronic Control Unit (ECU) computer system to manage the turbo's boost and airflow sensors, the Figaro's engine bay is a hyper-complicated labyrinth of vacuum lines and wiring bundles. It looks exactly like a modern 1990s or 2000s car under the hood, completely divorced from the simple 1970s analogue feel of the Be-1 and Pao engine blocks.

​The stark reality remains that the factory's engineering staff only ever provided the underlying, boxy appliance. The distinct soul of each vehicle came from whatever thematic world Naoki Sakai decided to drop onto their desks. For the Be-1, it was the smooth, ballooning architecture of puff pants. For the Pao, it was a completely different aesthetic universe built from what is documented as a safari theme. The Pao explicitly looks like a French military asset or a World War II North African desert military vehicle, and because it captures those utilitarian, rugged elements so perfectly, it absolutely succeeded in looking like it was on safari.

​The factory team was entirely dependent on Sakai's collages to spark a design with actual human emotion, even if the internal team tried to minimize his visual input. In the Hagerty profile, Kobata explicitly attempts to distance the physical car from Sakai's process by claiming, "Water Studio only proposes concepts; while they produce image panels collaged from photographs, they do not propose visible, concrete designs. They do not employ industrial designers. The designs were created by our in-house designers." Yet this exact statement highlights the institutional blindness of the engineering staff. It did not matter that Sakai did not draw the final production blueprints; his collages provided the absolute thematic parameters that the factory staff was completely incapable of imagining on their own. Sakai was absolutely kept in the loop to give critical aesthetic feedback as the internal engineering team developed the project.

​Furthermore, when Naoki Sakai temporarily left Nissan to create the brilliant, retrofuturistic Suzuki SW-1 motorcycle, the engineer's team was left to their own devices and produced the uninspired S-Cargo van that again looked like it had been made by children using cardboard and tape. The moment Sakai returned, the lineage immediately got back on track with the iconic Rasheen. Left to its own devices, Nissan has never demonstrated an independent ability to design anything emotive on its own. The entire retrofuturistic design revolution that ultimately reshaped Western automotive culture with New Beetles, Fiat 500s, and BMW Mini Coopers flowed entirely from the emotionally evocative designs of Naoki Sakai's vision, completely independent of any Nissan designers.

​It is highly unusual for a single concept car to ever make it into production. Typically, concept cars are strictly one-off, bespoke styling exercises. Yet, Naoki Sakai presented radical concept cars at the Tokyo Motor Show and had them clear the massive hurdle into production six times over 12 years, ranging from pure collector pieces and limited production runs sold by lottery to what were supposed to be full-scale, mass-market products.

​While many people are familiar with Sakai's work with Nissan's Pike Factory and the design of his Nissan Be-1, Pao, and Figaro, that was only what Naoki Sakai did for 6 years in the 1980s.

​Total Vehicles Produced That Were Designed by Naoki Sakai and Water Studio Shown at the Tokyo Motor Shows from 1985 through 1997, That Naoki Sakai Calls His "Works"

• ​Nissan Be-1: Shown at the 1985 Tokyo Motor Show, 10,000 units were produced between 1987 and 1988. It launched as an ultra-exclusive run, allocated strictly through a high-demand customer lottery system.

• ​Nissan Pao: Shown at the 1987 Tokyo Motor Show, 51,657 units were produced between 1989 and 1990. To satisfy the massive demand left over by the Be-1 lottery, Nissan opened a strict three-month pre-order window where anyone could sign up; it was completely fully subscribed within those 90 days.

• ​Nissan Figaro: Shown at the 1989 Tokyo Motor Show, 20,000 units were produced between 1991 and 1992. Demand was so intense that Nissan had to split the limited production into three separate allotment lotteries to manage deliveries.

• ​Suzuki SW-1: Shown at the 1991 Tokyo Motor Show, 200 units were produced in 1992, all of which remain in private collections except for the one unit on public display at the Suzuki History Museum in Suzuki Plaza in Hamamatsu, Japan. This 250cc motorcycle with a matching sidecar featured fully enclosed, highly sculpted bodywork completely finished in a signature cream color. From its cream-colored fuel tank and headlight nacelle to its deeply valanced front fender and large molded rear body shell, the entire machine was completely rounded and retrofuturistic just like his automotive designs. Suzuki followed a tight collector blueprint by freezing the SW-1 pre-order list the absolute second it hit its 200-unit cap.

• ​Nissan Rasheen: Shown at the 1993 Tokyo Motor Show, 72,793 1.5L and 1.8L units were produced between 1995 and 2000. This was meant to be the first uncapped, full-scale mass-market product release of the lineage.

• ​Nissan Rasheen Forza: Shown at the 1997 Tokyo Motor Show, the 2.0L Forza was a complete redesign with four round headlights instead of square, a wider body, and the prototype of all crossover SUVs and SUVs of the future; with no published sales data separate from the Rasheens, it is estimated at 8,000 units produced between 1998 and 2000.

​Total Production: 162,650 units

​Sakai's precise formula of using uncompromised, emotional "future memory" to create collector-hoarded artifacts was honed through his legendary industrial design breakthroughs outside the automotive sphere. In 1988, right during his period of heavy 1980s automotive dominance after designing the Pao and right before the Figaro debuted, Naoki Sakai and his team at Water Design partnered with Olympus. Together, they created the iconic "O-Product" 35mm film camera. The design relied heavily on a striking, geometric repetition of form, dominated by large, concentric circles stacked across its front face. Encased in a brushed and blasted aluminum shell, it shattered the dull, uninspired boxy spell that had monopolized the 1980s tech industry.

​The global design industry's response to this visual shakeup was immediate. By launching a premium, metallic alternative into a sea of dark polymer rectangles, Sakai single-handedly altered consumer tech aesthetics. Very quickly after the O-Product hit the market, a massive industrial paradigm shift occurred; within a few short years, more than half of all camera bodies produced globally abandoned the uniform black-plastic look to adopt silver, metallic finishes. Intentionally limited to a globally coveted run of 20,000 serialized units, the O-Product proved so culturally significant that it was later inducted into the permanent architecture and design collection at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). This masterful intersection of commercial product and pure, high-art collectability became the exact structural blueprint for how he navigated his micro-production runs on the showroom floor.

​Despite only selling these vehicles in total over 15 years across six models and two manufacturers, Naoki Sakai's legacy and Water Design's vision is that every single retrofuturistic car created in the late 1990s and even up until today are all his creations brought to market properly and finding a larger niche community. The entire world automotive industry's successful retrofuturistic vehicles were all built on the foundation laid by the Be-1, with only the shortly lived Audi TT and 11th-generation Ford Thunderbird being traced to the Figaro. Naoki Sakai's distinct vision naturally filtered the consumer base, and it turns out that in the end, the buyers of his "Works" have never been car buyers at all, they have always been a niche community of art collectors.