If you haven’t noticed, disillusionment is spreading rapidly through the population, and it’s afflicting young people the most. It’s based around a particular inequality in America that people in overseas countries can’t quite fathom. To them, it’s hard to believe Far Western governments would deny their citizens such a freedom.
We’re talking about the Suzuki Jimny, of course — a wee little Japanese body-on-frame, live-axle, two-door utility vehicle that’s just now entering its fourth generation. It debuted in 1970. A week’s perusal of social media posts tells me a subset of youngins don’t want glitzy show cars and promises of autonomous driving and touchscreens as wide as a sumo wrestler’s midriff. They want a small, basic, considerably inexpensive utility vehicle with respectable ruggedness and capability, but they can’t have it.
No. Fair.
We’re not getting the Jimny here, and it’s foolish to think a car company that threw in the towel earlier this decade would attempt to place its foot back in the door.
Now, it’s quite possible that, even if the plucky, Defender-on-a-budget Jimny was available here, the groundswell of desire for this vehicle would prove an illusion — a phenomena confined to the auto journo bubble, not unlike the tired “brown manual wagon” trope. Thing is, I feel it, too. And unlike overpriced Eurowagon shooting brakes that tempt car lovers with style and precision and snobby Continental refinement, the Jimny, if priced right, might just satisfy a larger group of buyers than we realized.
The fourth-gen Jimny adds refinements its bare-bones predecessors lacked, but keeps its utilitarian, go-anywhere DNA. Without those solid axles, ladder frame, and two-speed transfer case, it would cease being authentic. Beneath its hood, at least in export markets, lies a 1.5-liter inline-four making a very modest 100 hp and 95 lb-ft, enough to push around a vehicle weighing roughly as much as an early 80s K-car. A five-speed manual sings its siren song to lustful putrists on the far side of the Pacific, but you can hand over shifting duties to a slushbox if you wish.
It all sounds great — not unlike a Japanese Lada Niva. Still, maybe we’ve grown too soft, too used to independent suspensions and four doors and acres of room and a digital assistant to boss around in an attempt to retain a few shreds of our dying masculinity. Too used to wanting — and getting — a vehicle large enough to feel invincible behind the wheel. The days of the American-market Suzuki Samurai, which was itself just a second-gen Jimny, are long past.
It’s too bad I have to suffer the torture of watching a third-gen Jimny, shod with diplomat plates, driving around my neighborhood. I’ve tailed it just out of curiosity and longing. Guess the fellow behind the wheel either made use of Canada’s 15-year import rule or received an exemption through his work visa.
So, if not the Jimny… what else? Subcompact crossovers offer four doors and limited room and so-so power for a price usually starting below $20k, but just barely. And you won’t get four-wheel motivation for that base MSRP. Is there room at the bottom for something completely different?
Would you be interested in a Jimny, and, if so, what’s the price ceiling you wouldn’t go above? Bonus question: If the Jimny’s not your bag, what minimalist small SUV, real or imagined, would you like to see in its place?
[Images: Suzuki UK]
There might be a market for this, but I suspect that market is the same as the one for manual sports sedans: The people who are willing to pay money for that feature set are the same people who vow to wait and buy it used, because new cars are for suckers. The problem is that when 90% of your market thinks that way, you don’t sell any cars, no matter how popular they’d be in theory.
This is true. It’d be like reliving the S2000 fiasco all over again. We are seeing it today in real time with the Toyota 86/FRS/BRZ
I think, these 2 door cars have limited market to begin with. Not saying Jimmy can do great in US but at least it has 4 doors. Could Suzuki motorcycle buyers be candidates for these?
Look how close the steering wheel is to the windscreen. No way would you be able to sell that in the US.
“It all sounds great — not unlike a Japanese Lada Niva.”
I hope you realize that the Niva’s novelty is that was a unibody based design with smooth riding independent front suspension and a full-time 4wd system with a center diff that allowed easy and high traction on paved/mixed surfaces (wtih an option to lock said center diff as well as engage a low range off road). For the 70s it was a real technological breakthrough, made all the more amazing by the fact that the Soviet engineers basically used the existing Lada (Fiat 124) parts bin.
He had a lot of these little 4X4s, although they were fun they weren’t very practical and that’s why we don’t have them anymore. If you really like this the Renegade comes close, but is way more useful as a daily then these “cute utes” ever were
I assume that FCA would immediately sue over the Jimmy similarity to the Renegade – with the Jimmy looking like the Renegade’s older brother.
Dacia/Renault Duster. At 9,995 GBP (=$13K) in Ace of Base trim, it would have to come in under $20K here.
I’ve driven one of those. I wouldn’t wish that incredible piece of junk on my worst enemy. a Dodge Caliber is a better car.
Cushy French ride and a pretty legit AWD system, high clearance and good angles, downside is a very cheap interior. Like a French Jeep Patriot with a worse interior but much better visibility (I hate the needlessly thick door pillars on the Patriot). What’s particularly “junky” about them in your view?
the shifter felt like it was connected to the transaxle via bungee cords, the interior was cheaper than pretty much any Daimler-era Chrysler, the NVH was execrable, and if it had 100 horses underhood at least a quarter of them were dead and the remainder were malnourished.
I’ve only ridden in the back of one, it was a 2.0L. I’ll agree that the interior was cheap and NVH was atrocious (the car we were in had badly/unevenly worn tires). I think the 2.0L addresses the power concerns in a relative sense. For the locale I experienced it in it’s a good choice: better reliability and build quality than a Lada at a still-palatable price, with high clearance and long travel suspension and AWD that is perfect for Siberian environs. I suppose an American buyer would indeed be appalled.
Well Jim Z, a Caliber is more money so yes, it should be much better than a Duster. A loaded Duster is about 12-13,000.
The 1.5l diesel derived from Renault isn’t too bad.
Rode in one in Mexico. It handles cobblestones and crap roads just fine. It is built to a price–an extremely reasonable price. If you hate the Duster, you’re going to really hate the Jimny. It is a far better value proposition than that.
Russian car mags have done numerous long offroad trips comparing the Duster to various comparably-priced but more offroad-centric Russian models:
http://www.zr.ru/content/articles/576201-severnyj_probeg_na_rybalku_na_rybachij/?page=2
http://www.zr.ru/content/articles/901718-russkij-desant-v-pribaltike-uaz-patriot-chevrolet-niva-renault-duster/
The Duster will obviously never beat the serious 4wds offroad, but it can hold its own surprisingly well sometimes, and obviously does much better on the paved sections in terms of handling, fuel economy, etc.
I’ve kind of been wondering aloud on these pages before whether there is an untapped niche of a rough-and tumble SUV/Jeep thing that could undercut the Wrangler on size and price. Others have pointed out to me the difficulty of making this happen thanks to our CAFE rules and how they factor in wheelbases and such into their MPG requirements, as well as safety requirements. So if it weren’t for that, I do think there is space there. I think even laymen consumers recognize and appreciate real capability (in the form of aesthetics if nothing else) versus tarted up crossovers (see super strong Wrangler sales and the resurgent 4Runner).
Agree Gtem. Suzuki Samurai comes to mind. I see three-wheeled “motorcycles” out on the freeway pretty regularly and they are legal even though you are dead if you crash. As soon as you step up to automobile though, the regulations crush you. I just don’t think you can comply and still make them cheap enough, just like with the old mini-pickups.
I think there’s a good market for solid, well-built cars which aren’t loaded down with clever gadgets and USDOT-mandated gizmos like airbags, rear view cameras, etc. It’s one thing to mandate that cars not fall apart and pose a hazard to other cars; it’s entirely different to mandate expensive equipment which only protects the driver and passengers. Let the insurance companies jack up premiums for those cars, let owners (and passengers) have that choice.
I wouldn’t pay $20,000 for one of these. I would pay $5000. It’s the in-between that I don’t know.
Agreed. For $10-15K, I’ll take a surplus milspec Steyr-Daimler-Puch 230GL for real offroad capability and trendy minimalism.
If it doesn’t need to be street legal, a Mahindra Roxor would fit the bill. But any number of side by sides would fit that bill as well.
“Let the insurance companies jack up premiums for those cars, let owners (and passengers) have that choice.”
Before seat belts were mandated, car companies refused to even make them optional because the marketing guys felt that the presence of seat belts implied their cars were unsafe. The only reason there’s any kind of public awareness of vehicle safety now is *because* of safety regulations; read articles from the early ’50s about how many front seat passengers died in traffic accidents, and passenger deaths from minor impacts were considered a fait accompli with nary a mention of whether it might even be possible to make the vehicles themselves safer.
There are some things where you can’t just let owners decide, because they won’t be given the choice in the first place. Free markets are often very effective, but sometimes they need a nudge.
This is not true. There’s a wiki page showing deaths per vehicle mile traveled. It has been trending downward since the first statistics were collected, with bumps. You cannot tell from that line when the government stepped into the safety business.
I have never heard that seat belt story before, and I doubt it was generally true, because the stats show that safety has improved since day one. Apparently customers did want it, and manufacturers could provide it at acceptable prices.
Do you remember that Volvo scandal a few years back, where they stacked 7 Volvos on top of each other to show how string they were? Turned into a scandal because they used lumber inside to strengthen them.
Remember the fiasco of NBC(?) rigging explosives to show GM trucks blowing up, because they were not as prone to exploding as the news story said?
People care about safety and companies improve their product.
People installed lifelines and other “safety features” on their small fish boats during the age of the Greeks. While working hard to make every design as safe as they could afford and knew how to. Gun makers have always installed “safety features” on their guns. Car makers never saved money by replacing closed gas tanks mounted seemingly away from passengers, with open buckets in the passenger seats. Volvo made a business out of specifically being the “safe” choice. It’s not as if some taxfeeder invented the modern seatbelt, airbag, abs brake system nor anything else aside from an endless string of justifications for theft and graft. Rather, it was invented for reasons of competitive advantage. Then, once proven (or at least claimed to be), mandated on account of lobbying pressure from those with something to gain from doing so.
The “Government knows best” era simply coincided with systematic means of collecting the datasets going into compiling large number statistics. It’s this ability, that allowed both convincing the public to ante up for non-immediately-obvious safety features in consumer products; and that also allowed the taxfeeders to pretend they can “manage” society in aggregate. Seatbelts and Nannystates did coincide, but neither of them caused the other, IOW. Instead, they were both caused by the emerging ability to statistically determine effects of a change, across large populations.
In 1956 Ford offered seat belts in their cars. They were not bought by many people. As a matter of fact, the Ford debacle served for a number of years as proof the “safety does not sell”. When seat belts became mandatory, there was tremendous backlash against them. The prevailing view was that it was better to be “thrown clear” than wear a seat belt. The interlock that would not let the car start if the seat belt was not on the driver had to be done away with due to market resistance. Safety sells TODAY. It did not sell in the past. It sells because there is pressure to be safe from the government. If the car manufacturers had their way there would have been no safety rules at all. Cars were not particularly safe in the 1950’s or early 1960’s. It took a lot of pressure from the government to get safety to where it is today.
“Safety sells TODAY. It did not sell in the past.”
WRONG. The fact that cars have been getting safer and safer right from the beginning is all the proof needed.
Your seat belt story is just one story of one aspect of safety. It is not the full story, and the stats show it is an exception.
“Cars were not particularly safe in the 1950’s or early 1960’s.”
They were safer than in the 1940s, which were safer than in teh 1930s, and so on. They kept getting safer and safer. Wikipedia and other sites have plots of deaths per vehicle miles traveled, but a quick google doesn’t find them, and I have other things to do. You cannot look at those graphs and pick out when government started regulating safety. It is quite clear that people want safety for their own reasons, and that government does not make cars safer.
I wish that people who do not know what they are talking about would not comment. Sure cars got safer but they did not get much safer. Remember that cars of the thirties and some of the forties had steel bodies over wood body framing. General Motors refused to put safety glass in cars until it was mandated by the government. There are many cases where safety was ignored until it was mandated. It was not demanded by the public and the manufacturers did not want the expense of making the cars safer. Being an old fart, I can tell you that cars of the fifties were not safe. I owned a 1955 Chevrolet and a 1957 Chevrolet and while they were good cars for the time, they are nothing compared to the worst cars made today. I see people pining for the good old days. The old days were just old. They were not good.
Sadly, likely not a market for it here anymore. Folks want power, loaded features and general “cush.” This isn’t it. That said, with A/C and a manual (assuming priced right) this would be an absolute consideration for me as a DD. I don’t need, or want, five thousand different buttons to push and so much tech as to embarrass an F-35 with. I’m one person almost 100% of the time going to work. I’d love to park the Grand Caravan for use only on long trips for my daughter’s activities. Guess in a few years I’ll just look at a used pick up (much older, as used pick up prices are insane).
If kept street legal I think there could be a small market for these. On trails a small nimble rig can give you many more choices on how to approach obstacles. It would have to have a/c but thats all id want and it would have to hit about $15k. I wouldnt want to be on the highway with it though.
That being said $8k can get you a decent used wrangler that is a breeze to fix and has a huge aftermarket- thats what kills the market for anything new and street legal for people who dont need all the gizmos.
Anyone who wants one of these bare-bones off roader type things just buys a used Jeep. The market for new vehicles like this is very limited. Kind of like the market for small (less then current mid-sized) trucks. Small and cheap doesn’t sell, or when it does the profit margin means companies don’t even want to bother – like how Ford is ditching cars altogether despite making good little things like the Fiesta ST.
Limited does not mean nonexistent. Were it not regulated and litigated out of feasibility, this could be a good complement to a Prius in snowy states, for singles to small families, as just one example. The fact that cars like this are not even available, is what’s sad. Most may not buy them, but then again, most don’t buy Ferraris either. I bet this one would sell at least as many as some of the rarer model from that marque, if all selling it hre entailed, was putting it on a boat, sniff it’s tailpipe for undue emissions, and slapping a price tag on it.
A pipe dream. 1) The market for manual vehicles is already ‘miniscule’. 2) Suzuki marketed a number of body on frame SUVs in North America; the Sidekick, Vitara, Grand Vitara and XL7 . Their lack of sales led to Suzuki withdrawing from the North Amerian market.
“the Sidekick, Vitara, Grand Vitara and XL7 . Their lack of sales led to Suzuki withdrawing from the North Amerian market.”
It’s very telling, when I go to visit my brother in central PA near State College, their roads are still chock full of those older BOF trucklets and the final unibody grand vitaras (and SX4s). There was a local dealer and in that hilly locale with plenty of forest roads to explore and a local population that didn’t have a ton to spend on a car, the Suzuki 4wds sold like hotcakes!
Selling a bunch of crappy rebadged Daewoos did Suzuki in, as well as the global financial recession. Things have changed since then, and SUV sales have done nothing but grown since they discontinued their decent ones and replaced them with a GM Theta-derived crossover here.
If they re-entered North America with nothing but utilities, I bet they’d do okay. It’ll never happen, but its a nice thought.
My brother was recently wrenching on a 5spd Forenza with 155k miles that one of his subscribers had scooped up for $400 and nursed back to health. Not a horrible car for what it is, but a far cry from the cars Suzuki designed and built themselves.
From Wikipedia: “A commonly held misconception is that the third generation Grand Vitara is related to the GM Theta platform. The two are completely unrelated and were developed separately by GM and Suzuki and share no components.”
The XL7 was discontinued due to poor sales.
Which of the Suzuki SUV/CUV models sold in North America were rebadged Daewoos? Yes they did sell some rebadged Daewoo cars. But not their ‘bread and butter’ cars like the Swift, Aerio and SX4.
Suzuki stopped selling new vehicles in Canada after 2014. How much has the market changed since then?
“Which of the Suzuki SUV/CUV models sold in North America were rebadged Daewoos? ”
None, but I didn’t see John implying anywhere that they were. I do think that the Daewoo cars (Reno, Forenza, Verona) did serve to erode what little good will Suzuki had with American shoppers. Then again their previous compact cars (Esteem) didn’t sell well at all from what I can tell, whereas I still see plenty Forenzas on the road (easy credit fodder in the mid 2000s).
My brother’s friend bought a used SX4 hatch with a stick, that car was better on paper and in pictures than in person. The 2.0L was really thirsty for such a small car, it was really loud and unrefined, even compared to the base model ’09 Forester that replaced it (which ended up being the biggest lemon I’ve ever seen).
What probably hurt Suzuki the most in North America was the end of the CAMI relationship at the end of 2009. They never truly recovered.
The ‘large’ cars that you mentioned were never big sellers for Suzuki in North America.
Their bread and butter were small SUVs which once CAMI ended they had to source from overseas and compact cars, which previously during CAMI they also had access to from a North American plant.
It is very hard to exist as an independent company in North America by selling low margin, limited volume, inexpensive vehicles manufactured in Japan.
I think there is a market for a small, differentiated, simple compact. I would buy an Opel Adam tomorrow just based on looks and size.
Oh yeah! It’s right up my alley!
I’m a 30-something guy with a suburban house and a short commute and a tiny garage and an only child and I want to put something shorter than 160″ in that garage so I can have room to use the workbench, to make things I bring home on the roof of said tiny utility vehicle.
There are literally dozens of us!
(And that’s why I’m stuck between four of the slowest vehicles you can buy, that I don’t really like all that much: Kia Soul, Mazda CX-3, Honda HR-V, or that one weird short-bus Transit Connect)
How about the Renegade? Get a manual 4wd setup before they’re gone.
If the driver was a diplomat, they are granted an exemption from import restrictions. But when their tour ends, the car goes with them.
Why not sell it through their powersports outlets?
This is the closest thing to my ’98 Rav: Small, light, 4 wheel drive, manual transmission and (probably) reasonably priced. The perfect winter beater. This is one vehicle I would actually consider buying new. I couldn’t care less about the lack of power or safety features.
If there really were a US market for it, and if it could feasibly be made to meet US crash safety standards, why wouldn’t a partner with an existing US presence step up and rebadge it?
Nissan comes to mind.
Nissan used to sell a rebadged Mitsu Pajero Mini as the Nissan “Kix,” neat little offroader.
I’d prefer that Suzuki didn’t get sucked into the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance of Awfulness. Besides, Nissan already denied us their bigger version (with, frankly, a better sales proposition), the new Terra.
Maybe Mazda could sell it for them. But, it’d be the same story as before. Consumer Reports would ignore all logic and try to make it follow a Civic Si through the cones and it would tip over, then they’d launch a huge campaign against it because its a death trap when not treated how its supposed to be treated.
It did not do well in crash tests.
https://jalopnik.com/we-regret-to-inform-you-the-new-suzuki-jimny-isnt-great-1829175408
Just don’t crash them. Problem solved.
I absolutely love the Jimny. It would most certainly make me reconsider my decision for forgo a new vehicle right now. I’d probably trade the GMC in on it.
Make it with rubber floors, even better. It’d be perfect to take on these jobs, and for play when I’m not working (camping, fishing, off-roading, etc, basically exactly what I bought the GMC for).
I know it won’t be BOF with solid axles, but maybe Ford’s upcoming “baby Bronco” will be closer to this than it is the Escape, as far as capability.
I’ll take Jeep Renegade with GTI manual powertrain
Whenever I see a fully loaded 4 seat ATV towed behind a Lightning I think, why not just rehab a an old Samurai and save 15 grand? Or better yet , off road in the Lightning.I’m not an off roader , but I think I’d prefer something that treads lightly, and runs cheaply.
I think I may need to re-watch the Top Gear jungle expedition.
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Privit Corparashuns luv us – they wouldn’t do nuthin’ wrong, er hurt us’n jist to save a buck!