The Kizashi was perhaps the best four-wheeled Suzuki ever built, and in certain trim and equipment levels it represented a real alternative to expensive near-luxury sedans. It’s no longer for sale here, of course, but in one rather unique market it’s been given a fascinating last hurrah.
Our friends in Malaysia report that the Kizashi is being sent off with a special matte-black edition:
Besides the matte black exterior shade, the car gets a new 2-Din audio system with touchscreen, navigation as well as a HD reverse camera with night mode. Standard kit includes leather seats, six airbags and ESP, bi-Xenons and push-start ignition and, in the case of the Sport, 18-inch alloys wrapped with 235/45 rubbers.
No changes to the mechanicals, the Kizashi continuing on with the J24B 2.4 litre four-pot with 178 PS at 6,500 rpm and 230 Nm of torque at 4,000 rpm for output; likewise, the six-speed CVT ‘box. The car comes with a three-year or 100,000 km warranty.
Total net price is about 130,000RM, which is basically forty grand in US money. Or slightly less than a Focus Titanium costs in the same market.
The Kizashi put the lie to the idea that good product always succeeds in the American marketplace. The question is: could some razzle-dazzle marketing have saved the car? How about some matte paint?
This could have wiped the floor with an Acura ILX.
Which is another car that nobody is purchasing.
Come now. ILX dominates the Acura Service Loaner segment.
I didn’t think the 1,400 ILX units monthly were solely purchases.
+1
Between the Sonata and Accord and Camry this was DOA.
What Sonata has common with Camry and Accord. I would paraphrase “Between appliances like Camry, Accord and Altima was DOA”. It might compete more with Mazda6, Fusion, Kia, Malibu and Sonata. AFAIK it based on the same platform as previous gen Malibu.
It would probably compete with Chevy Cruze instead of midsize market – both are a larger compact cars.
I agree, it was a bit too small for how they were pitching and pricing it.
Even if it were a matty, razzle-dazzle gem, it still would have failed because of the Suzuki logo on the front. The brand was a dead man walking for a long time here* before it went away.
*Here means the USA – so don’t reply with a tangent of “The USA was a small piece of their operation hurr durr!”
$40k for an unintegrated afterthought stereo and a flat finish? Yeah. Ohkay.
P.S. The product was doomed because the dealer network at that point was a joke. Suzukis sold on subprime financability for so long, your average F&I guy at a store carrying this brand didn’t know how to approach a decent product.
The Kizashi, though, is certainly an aggressive buy for a cash customer or certain subprime finance programs because it IS a lot of a car for the money – so long as you can sell the merits of the product itself and find a lender that will finance it (many won’t). For what its worth, a ’12 SLS Sport w/miles in the 20s transact for LESS than ’12 Corolla L with similar mileage.
Good product is just the ante to play in this game.
Well put.
I’m stealing that phrase.
Getting a 2012 SLS with a stick shift is nigh impossible. They don’t sit on lots long at all. I’d like to get one but the owners ain’t selling and the miles are racking up. :(
this car is an abject lesson for other manufacturers let alone suzuki
the stats are astounding
since it was released here 5yrs ago it has sold the same amount that mazda sell the mazda 6 in two months
it has a PFI engine that uses much more gasoline than the mazda 6 skyactive
i went to see one of these went it first came out and wasnt impressed back then
i find it quite attractive for what it is but i didnt feel comfortable behind the wheel and i’m avg. height
problem is it has neither the space nor speed nor fuel economy of even the koreans
hell, i bet the chinese have a car that isnt far behind
its just a car that doesnt capture peoples excitement and worse still, its a pale facsimile of the concept cars
suzuki have said they wont make another medium sized car and will stick to its strengths (india? sub C segments? small CUVs?)
Suzuki destroyed their brand in the US by marketing rebadged Daewoos. People that expected Japanese quality and engineering were disappointed. Now GM is doing the same thing, but people that expect Detroit quality and engineering are just fine with Daewoos.
Agreed. Whoever decided to rebadged those Daewoos as Suzukis is completely to blame for the fact that Suzuki is no longer here.
IIRC: back then GM owned a good chunk of Suzuki and shared a few products/platforms – Tracker, Metro, 2nd gen XL7. GM also bought Daewoo Motors, and routed factory output from the now defunct Daewoo to Suzuki showrooms. After a few years, GM sold off its stake of Suzuki, and Suzuki sold back its stake in the XL7 factory.
It competes closely to the Civic at the time and some metrics beat the Honda. Considering the price one could purchase at a discount, unlike Honda’s, it sounds like a fun car according to people who drove it here. Not like the noise chamber of the Civic.
http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/sedans/1203_honda_civic_si_vs_suzuki_kizashi_sport_gts_vs_volkswagen_jetta_gli_comparison/viewall.html
I do not understand the whole matte paint finish on cars craze.
Me neither. In my day it was the black primer you sprayed on in the garage till you saved up enough cash for an Earl Scheib paint job.
It’s different. That’s about it.
But if you believe the corporatese that seeps out of internet car websites, people are willing to pay for such “exclusivity.”
It just brings a tear to my eye – imagine if that was theoretically on sale in the USA…why, it could look even better on a poster locked inside the showroom, next to the SX4 poster, at the Suzuki dealership that was oddly never open and had a Magnum, an Avenger, and a Silverado as their sole offerings for sale on the lot.
This car was never going to succeed. It was a half-size too small with a weird name from a brand with no recognition, and all of its strengths were in areas that car consumers don’t seem to care about.
This was the MkV Jetta for people who couldn’t buy MkV Jettas once the Americanized MkVI came out. Or the car for those nostalgic over the first-gen Mazda6.
It also shows exactly how little influence the auto enthusiast press has on American consumers. This car was hyped, promoted, and extolled and still landed with a wet, dull thud in the marketplace.
There was a time when being Japanese was good enough. The weaker brands were able to ride the coattails of the stronger brands.
That is no longer the case. Today, some Japanese brands are more credible than others, and the good brands get the vast majority of the business while the others languish.
Suzuki took a hit as a car brand with the Samurai, and rest of the lineup would prove to be too weak to make up for that blow. There was not much reason for most people to roll the dice with this car, assuming that they had even heard of it.
What a waste! Suzuki has great potential but they have no idea what to do about the US market just like Subaru many years ago. Bruce Willis with the infamous “Legacy my first” commercial barely made a difference. Suzuki has great bikes and small rocket cars in Japan. They need to get it right here in the US soon or they’ll be out.
They already are out.
Suzuki had no potential as a car company. It made essentially Opel or Daewoo engineered cars. It will be the last “midsize” Suzuki since it is already outdated and GM is not going to provide a new platform. They may rebadge some other Japanese car though but what is point? There is nothing from design point of view to make it more desirable that original or any other brand.
Test drove one of these shortly before the dealer folded. The handling is nice and the interior is a nice place to be, but the the engine sucks.
The Kizashi still would have been a dud. That class of cars is so competitive that unless it was priced under $22k, it’d pick up some subprime buyers and generate a LITTLE excitement. Otherwise, nothing to see here folks.
This car was DOA. If I were in the market, I would consider a Corolla before this car. Why? Because I at least want a reliable car with a dealer network that isn’t going to vanish at any moment.
Suzuki’s American organization probably took the market seriously in their minds, but you’d never know it by the marketing. I wonder if that’s an artifact of their bike business, where their brand is so strong that even new customers absorb it by osmosis and seek out dealers on their own.
Maybe a trike like the Elio would work, but with a 300hp Turbo Hayabusa. Let the bike dealers sell it since it would be a motorcycle
That CVT is horrible, that is one of the reasons no one bought this car, the stick was a lot better, besides people did not think Suzuki would survive much longer, same issue that Mitsu is facing.
We bought one new for 21k vs sticker of 27 on Jan 3, 2010. Wife has 60k miles, no issues, gas mileage not great, cvt boring, but great value for money, handles well, coming from guy with former gtis and s4s..
By the time the Kizashi came out, Suzuki faced two major problems:
1. They had gained the reputation as the manufacturers of ridiculously bad econoboxes.
2. They had lost most of their dealer network, so that even if someone wanted a Kizashi, there wasn’t many places to actually *BUY* one.
The most significant problem with Suzuki in the U.S. and some other markets is where they made the vehicles people wanted: Japan. With the exchange rate what it was it was impossible to make money. True, the Kizashi was really good but the exchange rate made it impossible to spend on advertising and make any sort of profit. The car had to speak loudly for itself on its own merit and that just wasn’t good enough to sell. As for us, we bought one in 2010 and have been quite pleased, but we were already familiar with the absolutely f*&ingly bullet-proof quality of the Japanese made Suzukis.
Had the opportunity to go to Barbados recently. There, every rental car company advertises that it has Suzukis. They could advertise Chevys or Hondas or Toyotas but that’s the name they choose. Reminds me of the catch phrase – the smart money goes with Budget. And snow blowers – the ones with Suzuki engines (but not nameplates) sell like old gold coins.
And we have always loved Suzuki transmissions. They don’t hunt for gears; they shift smoothly. The CVT on the Kizashi doesn’t shift, but it sure is smooth. Nice stuff, really great on the pocketbook.
I always liked this car. A guy at my gym has one and its a good looking little ride.
BTW Jack, I just read the article in R/T about your trip to Malaysia.
Excellent read! I hope everyone on this site gets a chance to read it. Keep those coming!
I was looking at one of these in 2012 when we were in the market for a sedan. Two things kept us from even getting to the test drive.
1. We were looking for a manual trans, and heated seats. Proved difficult to find and they didn’t have it in the Kizashi.
2. I didn’t even know where to test drive one.
I did like the looks of the thing though, and certainly would have considered the unpopular brand.
Oh well. Ended up with an Acura.
I once considered a Suzuki SX4 as a replacement for my old Ranger.
A compact AWD car with a nonzero towing capacity seemed really appealing.
Alas, the MPG on that tiny little car was no better than the f’ing pickup truck it would have been replacing. Like the Jeep Liberty CDI, I scratched that off my list and kept the truck.
Have they made any progress on the efficiency of these cars? You give up some for cheap and rugged, but it should at least be better than a pickup truck (which has a durable suspension and a substantial payload capacity).
As my wife was contemplating replacing her TJ we tried the SX4. I thought it was a good replacement for the Wrangler as the cabin was slightly longer and wider, rode slightly better, got slightly better milage, and was probably slightly more reliable. Nowhere near the off road capablity, but there are a ton of them here in VT because they are cheaper then Subarus and as good for mud season.
As an irrational consumer I was totally turned off by Suzuki advertising the AWD Kizashi in ski magazines as more capable then a snowcat because among other things it had a shorter turning circle. As a cat can turn around inside it’s own length, I couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for another small sedan trying to live on nonexistent hype.
Like ToniJZX said above, this car excels at nothing. Pretty doesn’t do it. Here in Norway, the car was new only a few years ago, heavily marketed to start with. But who wants an underaverage sedan from a company that is known for cutthroat moneysaver 4×4’s like the – behold! – Ignis? A planning failure, unfortunately.
“The question is: could some razzle-dazzle marketing have saved the car? How about some matte paint?”
No, and no.
Other than in the magical place of Internetlandia, Suzuki does not exist. I have no idea where any of their dealerships were, or even if they ever had any. I see them on the roads less frequently than Maseratis and SMARTs, but more frequently than Teslas (for now). I suspect the last time anyone IRL heard of them was when Consumer Reports made the Samurai headline news.
Maybe this exact car would sell well if it were sold at Chevy dealerships with a Malibu badge. IDK. But I do know that if you took an Accord/Fusion and put a Suzuki badge on it, it wouldn’t.
A good car unloved by anyone except enthusiasts.
Suzuki’s biggest sin was the hookup with GM. It did not better the breed to be in bed with GM. I opened the door to a gently used and fully loaded XL-7 with leather, 3rd row and all the toys this weekend while car shopping. Looking at the GM sourced switch gear and mentally seeing the same basic switch gear in my mother-in-law’s Torrent… well let’s just say the V6 AWD 2010 Highlander SE across the lot seemed even nicer than it had when I test drove it.
Suzuki should have stood on its own two feet and been un-apologetically Japanese. Hopefully it could have at least found a niche that way.
I would never buy another Suzuki, even if I could here in the States. I had an 08 SX4 that I bought new and had to have the engine replaced under warranty with 65,000 miles on it. Anything that broke was expensive to fix because there is no aftermarket for it. 50k later engine was acting up again but had no warranty. The engine appeared to be a common problem as dealer new exactly what the issue was.
I lked the car up until the engine went.