“According to the Wolfsburg grapevine, the Volkswagen Group is set to increase its 19.9 percent share in Suzuki by ten percent annually over the next four to five years,” says Automobile Magazine in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And they immediately ask: “What for?” Right. (Read More…)
India is supposed to be the world’s next growth market. For one company, this is already more than true: For Japan’s Suzuki. The Maruti Suzuki joint venture owns more than 50 percent of India’s market. And soon, Suzuki will build more cars in India than back home in Japan. (Read More…)
Why eat the poor when you can sell them cheap car that’s fun to drive? The current Suzuki Swift is widely considered a poor man’s MINI, delivering funky front-drive fun for much less cash than it’s Bavarian-British reference point. And with the next-generation (shown here testing at the ‘ring) said to be headed stateside, Suzuki’s probably hoping it will be the ticket to less-lilliputian sales numbers. Unfortunately the brand’s latest offering, the Kizashi, is averaging a mere 338 sales per month this year… so don’t hold your breath for a swift Suzuki revival just yet.
Hybrid/electric cooperation between Volkswagen and Suzuki appears to be yielding fruit already, as the Japanese automaker is announcing a plug-in hybrid version of its Swift subcompact. According to Bloomberg BusinessWeek, the new plug-in will combine lithium-ion batteries supplied by Sanyo, paired with a 660cc three cylinder engine. An electric-only range of just under ten miles is being thrown around, after which the gas engine will apparently be used to generate electricity along the lines of GM’s Volt Extended-Range Electric concept. 60 test units of the plug-in Swift will be delivered to Japanese dealers for testing “later this year,” although official plans regarding when and where the vehicle will eventually go on sale have not yet been announced. Suzuki had previously said that one of the goals of its cooperation with VW was to develop electric vehicles for the Japanese market.
Did we say that Japanese brands have to do something to stop the erosion of market share in China? Nissan took the advice and said today that they started construction of their second factory in China’s southern Guangdong Province. According to The Nikkei [sub], the factory will open in 2012 with an annual capacity of 240,000 vehicles. (Read More…)
Guess who was matchmaker for Daimler’s three-way tie-up with Renault and Nissan? The Nikkei [sub] thinks it was Volkswagen. VW’s alliance with Suzuki “spooks Daimler into thinking small,” says the Tokyo business paper. And that’s quite a change for formerly bigthinking Daimler. (Read More…)
This little truck slays me. It’s just so damn cute and toy-like, my desire to take it home and put it in my playroom is mighty powerful. Have you ever seen anything like it before? I didn’t think so; I never had. But then it’s not exactly a US spec vehicle, not surprisingly, although how exactly these illegal aliens make it through the cracks and get licensed is beyond me. And it’s hardly the only one in town, along with the Nissan Pao. And they’re both almost the same color. Maybe that’s the key. Anyway, someone is fulfilling their desires for toys. Wish it was me. (Read More…)
Suzuki is saying sayonara to plans of hybrid and V6 equipped versions of their new Kizashi sedan. It’s not that they are against those mills. They just don’t like the company that makes them. That company is GM. (Read More…)
What a difference twenty years makes. The eighties was the Japanese decade, when they were going to take over the US, if not the world. They bought prime real estate assets like Rockefeller Center and Pebble Beach. They wrote books telling the US how to fix its problems. And their car makers were swamping the US like a tsunami. The last of the holdouts, Daihatsu, finally showed up on our shores at a rather inauspicious time: 1988, one year before the great Japanese stock market collapse. Did Daihatsu’s failure and retreat in 1992 have to do more with Japanese hubris in trying to sell a “BMW quality” Geo Metro, or was the Charade just an overpriced charade? Or is there a difference? (Read More…)
Volkswagen and its freshly hitched 20 percent bride Suzuki will have a sit-down next week to “flesh out their joint projects by welding together a number of ideas,” reports The Nikkei [sub] from an earnings briefing in Wolfsburg.
The Nikkei guesses that Volkswagen will provide hybrid and electric-vehicle technologies to Suzuki. In turn they are interested in know-how on manufacturing subcompacts at low cost. As far as distribution goes, the two will most likely compare notes on China, where VW is strong, and on India, where Suzuki rules the roost. (Read More…)
India is going to be an economic powerhouse, just like China. With 1.1 billion people, that’s a lot of potential customers for your goods. Suzuki knew this, which is why they pushed hard in India. Suzuki is the undisputed market leader in India. Whenever there are developments in that market, we should probably listen. Listen up: (Read More…)
Subaru crushed it again this month [via PRNewswire], with the Outback and Forester both breaking 6,000 units of sale and overall sales up 38 percent. Suzuki, not so much [full release here]. Despite a recently-launched (and relatively well-received) C-segment sedan, the Japanese brand managed to sell only 1,375 cars last month. That’s fewer units than the Jeep Compass, and only slightly better than the Dodge Nitro and Buick Lucerne. On their own. Suzuki’s one sick puppy! Details after the jump.
BusinessWeek reports that Nissan could be up a certain creek without a certain instrument. In Europe, Nissan competes in the low cost, city car segment (just below cars like the Toyota Yaris and Honda Jazz) by selling a rebadged Suzuki Alto which they call the “Nissan Pixo”. This car competes with the Toyota Aygo/Peugeot 107/Citroen C1, Fiat Panda and the Volkswagen Fox (which is curious, because the BW article says “Volkswagen Lupo” which hasn’t been sold in Europe since 2005). But since Suzuki got a German partner (insert your own Bertel Schmitt reference here), the Pixo is looking a bit left out in the cold. The burning question: would Suzuki carry on supplying Nissan with cars or would the Wolfsburg Warriors put pressure on Suzuki to say “Nein”?
It’s obvious that Suzuki isn’t surviving the global downturn on US sales. Stateside, the Japanese automaker’s sales fell over 50 percent last year, with only 38,695 vehicles sold. Globally, Suzuki sold 908,302 units, meaning fewer than one out of 20 Suzukis sold worldwide were in the US market. That’s no big surprise as Suzuki has long focused on developing markets for growth. What is surprising is that Suzuki’s Indian joint venture Maruti actually outproduced its parent company, racking up 966,399, of which about 130k were exported. Wilder still, Maruti sold 967,581 units last year, more than it could produce and more than Suzuki produced worldwide. Suzuki owns 54 percent of Maruti, the best-selling brand in the Indian market by a healthy margin. The Indian market grew by 19 percent last year, while the Japanese market fell by ten percent.
The Japanese press is making a big to-do out of the combined 2009 sales of Volkswagen and Suzuki. Or rather out of the fact that the two together sold more than Toyota. „Suzuki-VW Beats Toyota In Global Sales In ’09” headlines The Nikkei, as if the two would be one company.
That the two of them could easily crush Toyota is no news to TTAC readers. When we announced the VW-Suzuki nuptials on Dec 9, 2009, we said: “Suzuki has an output of 2.36 million units a year; added to VW’s sales, Toyota would be toast.”
The Nikkei did the adding, and writes: (Read More…)
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