how Suzuki failed at selling cars in the U.S., despite success worldwide #SUZUKIUSA #AMERICANCARS #SALESDECLINE

                 Back in 1985 suzuki motors of japan officially entered the us automotive market by introducing the samurai a compact suv that was better known in other markets as the Jimny suzuki also paired up with other automakers like daewoo and general motors to help bring their compact cars to a wider audience and they stayed in the suv game with the sidekick x90 and xl7.

But with products that couldn't stand out among competitors and fighting litigation due to false claims of high rollover risk Suzuki was forced out of the u.s market by 2012. this is a story of how suzuki despite success across the world failed to win over american buyers this is my old car mile car is now on instagram follow me at Something Unique to send suggestions for future episodes and use the hashtag my old car 1981 to share photos of your old car so over the past year i've had many requests to feature various suzuki cars the new swift has more front leg room than this rolls royce or the whole company as clearly noted by this Reader as my blogspot generally focuses on cars which were sold in north america starting at less than 7400 the swift costs less than this child's toys my focus for this episode will be on suzuki's attempt to sell cars here starting with the establishment of suzuki of america automotive in 1985 and yes there are some of these cars that are worthy of their own episode so i'm not ruling that out for the future so first a quick bit of history suzuki which today is the fourth largest car manufacturer in japan behind toyota honda and nissan was founded over 100 years ago in 1909 and not as an automobile manufacturer in fact not even in any form of transportation but instead as a loom maker the eventual founder of suzuki motors michio suzuki designed an automated loom for his mother's business word spread quickly about the loom's exceptional design and orders came in from all over japan over the next 30 years his company focused on loom production but suzuki wanted to diversify and saw great potential in building small cars this began in 1937 and although some prototypes were made the onset of world war ii put an end to their plan as the japanese government deemed the production of civilian cars not essential suzuki tried to return to car production by 1952 but found a bigger market in developing small engines that could be attached to bicycles thus started production of what would become what many believe suzuki is most famous for their motorcycles with production ramping up to 6000 built per month by 1954 they did try producing a car in 1955 the suzu light which had features that were uncommon back then such as front wheel drive and independent suspension but motorcycle production remained a top priority in the 1960s suzuki experimented more with cars focusing on off-road vehicles that culminated in 1970 with the introduction of the jimny which was small enough to be classified as a k-car a designation for japanese mini cars which were a necessity on their crowded city streets but the chimney was unique for k-cars and that i had four wheel drive the chimney's engine was small really small as low as only 360 ccs and only 25 horsepower but it proved to be a hit not.

                     Just in japan but in other asian markets as well as indonesia and australia a second generation of the jimny began in 1981 initially designated as sj30 but it also sold under many other names it was exported to canada and puerto rico that same year where it became known as a samurai more on that car a little bit later by this point u.s automakers were getting hit hard with small economical japanese imports from toyota honda nissan and mazda general motors with few subcompact options found they had no choice but to attempt to collaborate with their japanese competitors in 1981 gm announced a partnership with suzuki to help bring sub-compacts to the north american market by that point japanese cars had gained such a better reputation for reliability than american cars that the partnership was a win for all of them it helped suzuki gain a foothold in the american market and gm could tout their japanese reliability the first car to come out of the gm suzuki partnership was the cultists also known as the swift oddly enough the underlying architecture of the cultists originated as a gm design which was known internally as the m platform in 1983 not to be confused with the same letter that gm designated for the chevy astro and gmc safari van platform in 1985 but before the design of the future cultists was complete gm execs didn't think that such a small car would be profitable enough so they sold the design to suzuki in exchange for a five percent stake in the company suzuki brought the cultists to market in japan in 1983 and began exports worldwide including back to the united states and canada in 1985. for the u.s market gm re-bashed the cultists as the sprint grab the name gm had previously used on a gmc model in the 70s that was a twin of the chevy el camino in canada the cultist was rebadged as the pontiac firefly and as a suzuki forza it also was an australian import where then gm subsidiary holden badged it as the barina a car this tiny of course also had a tiny engine the smallest being a one liter three cylinder although a turbo model was also offered this much modified power plant puts out 70 horsepower and 79 pound-feet of torque before the sprint arrived in the u.s gm's smallest car offering was the chevette which was still rear-wheel drive and on a platform which was by then almost 10 years old but i don't need the hatchback.

   

              I've already got a truck soon after the chevette's end in 1987 gm began plans for a new sub-brand of cars called geo of which the second generation cultists would play a starring role as a lead up to it the last year of the sprint offered a model dubbed the sprint metro essentially the cheapest version of an already cheap car when the geo brand debuted in 1989 the sprint portion of the name was dropped i won't go into a lot of detail here about the geo brand as i have an entire episode devoted to it but i will mention one of the other geo models that gm got help with from suzuki the geo tracker which was based on a model suzuki started in japan in 1988 the escudo suzuki marketed the same car in the us and canada as a sidekick but i'm getting a bit ahead of myself here because we need to go back a few years to 1985 when suzuki officially launched the previously mentioned chimney in the united states it's rough tough brush busting i marketed it as a 1986 samurai although it had already been in canada and puerto rico for a few years it was in the us where suzuki quickly grew its reputation as a serious contender in small four-wheel drive cars taking you there anywhere even places you forgot to go which by that point the market had been dominated by the jeep wrangler the samurai sold around 47000 units in the us in just its first year and by 1987 it doubled the sales of the wrangler but the good times wouldn't last long with its lightweight and relatively tall height in relation to its width it had a higher risk of rollover that's what the magazine consumer reports stated in 1988 after they subjected a samurai to a road test which as consumer reports explicitly stated it easily rolls over in turn although they would later argue that they didn't mean that this was the case under normal driving position.

the statement was clearly interpreted as such in the media despite the road force in question being later proved to have been modified to make it easier for the rollover to occur it was later revealed that consumer reports had unintentionally rolled the samurai in early testing and then kept trying to recreate the incidents resulting in the courts being modified to help encourage a rollover cu believes the samurai's performance presents an unreasonable risk of harm to the consumer and thus rates the suzuki samurai as not acceptable the press quickly pounced on the story and suzuki soon saw their huge sales lead drop suzuki would later file a lawsuit in 1996 against the magazine's parent company consumer union who claimed to have documentation from suzuki as far back as 1985 that they knew the samurai was prone to rollover the lawsuit dragged on until 2004 and was settled out of court now the all-important break test let's break for lunch however long before that even if the lawsuit hadn't happened the samurai would have needed a substantial redesign just remain legal to sell in the u.s thanks to a 1994 requirement for shoulder belts on the rear seats to get around this the last two years of the samurai were simply built without a rear seat as there simply wasn't a place to mount shoulder belts are you a hawaii scumbag do you chug energy drinks in arizona suzuki samurai ninja name garbage car luckily for suzuki they had also started importing the slightly larger side kick in 1989. and it officially became the replacement for the samurai upon the latter's end of production in 1995 and as i noted earlier suzuki's partnership with gm offered essentially the same car as the geo tracker oh and then there was a short-lived brand called asuna gm's canadian counterpart to jio which sold a rebadged sidekick as the sunrunner and for some rod reason also sold it as a pontiac and then of course there was a geo metro a gm design re-badged second generation suzuki cultist which became the cheapest and probably best known of all the geo models and although it made my top 10 list for worst subcompact cars it also made my list of 10 best which clearly showed the love hate relationship the little three cylinder mini car had although my apologies for its fans i still laugh anytime i see a metro ragtop although the geo brand initially did well with not just suzuki but also toyota and isuzu among the companies providing five different models over the course of jio's run gm phased out geo by 1997 and started selling some of the former geo models as chevrolets including the tracker but as suzuki continued through the 1990s suvs were becoming more popular and despite the stigma that their name had with the samurai suzuki was determined to win back more market share by expanding their suv options the sidekick which was started in 1988 had redeemed some of suzuki's reputation but they also wanted offered something smaller and more nimble like the samurai once was what they came up with was the x90 a two-seater with a t-top style roof based on a variation of the sidekick platform sales began in japan in 1995 and reached the u.s the following year but although it offered four-wheel drive it looked more like something to drive on the beach and only about 7200 were ever sold in the u.s even with a 25 price drop in 1997 sales were still abysmal resulting in cancellation that same year if you own an x90 hold on to.

    

   It as it may be worth something someday just due to its rarity the x90 from suzuki ask anyone who wants one following the x-90s failure suzuki offered the more practical xl7 which although was classified as mid-sized offered seating for seven in fact the name xl7 was intended to mean extra-large seven-seater and by 2007 would be one of their best-selling models suzuki also offered the three-door vitara which would eventually replace a sidekick starting in 1998 but they also offered a five-door version named the grand vitara as suzuki entered the new millennium the year 2000 would be their second best sales year in the u.s up to that point only behind 1987 at just over 60000 cars sold arguably their most famous subcompact the metro which by this time had been rebranded as a chevrolet finally ended in 2001.

                              Its replacement was the aerio which fans of the bbc show top gear may recognize as one of the reasonably priced cars that celebrity guests would race around their track although there in the uk it was called the lyanna he's going up oh no that's okay suzuki would grow with small car lineup starting in 2004 with two more models the forensic sedan and wagon and the reno hatchback but neither were actually suzuki's they were daewoos this is the best looking suzuki yet specifically they were daewoo laceties the sedan version of the lassetti was also featured on top gear but there it was branded as a chevrolet something which i remember finding a bit odd considering it was a bbc show not realizing back then that gm still having partial ownership of suzuki sold it as a chevrolet in europe it's gonna be an axe oh my god also provided suzuki with a mid-sized verona sedan which was a rebadged dew magnus but was a poor seller and likely hard to find today lasting only until 2007. in my earlier debut episode i noted the end of daewoo as a brand by 2002 but they actually lived on in the u.s a few more years afterwards thanks being rebranded as suzuki's although suzuki's compacts didn't sell nearly as well as rivals from honda and toyota those compact cars along with suvs like.

   

          The xl7 and grand photara helped suzuki reach its high sales numbers in the us by 2007 with almost 102000 units sold one of the cards that helped him reach that goal was the compact sx4 officially a replacement for the aerio but with a taller hatchback whose name translated to sports crossover four seasons suzuki co-developed the sx4 with fiat and brought it to the us for the 2007 model year and although it reached its best sales in 2008 with almost 30000 sold if a stiff competition just like the rest of suzuki's lineup shopping for a car leaving you a bit scrambled by 2009 sales had dropped by almost two-thirds and the suzuki lineup was showing its age our deals are always signed up it also didn't help that in 2008 general motors had to give up its ownership share as they were in bankruptcy themselves nobody but nobody beats bob to help expand its offerings in 2008 suzuki partnered with nissan to sell a rebadged version of the compact frontier pickup in the u.s called the suzuki equator anyone who knew the popular nissan pickup weren't fooled so relatively few were sold in the u.s but the much bigger risk that suzuki took was to try to get back into the midside sedan market in 2009 with a model called the kazashi a bit big on advertising creating ads like the super bowl commercial from 2011 wicked weather has met its match and yet again in 2012 the big game wasn't a big help as the kazashi couldn't even reach 7000 units sold each year by 2011 suzuki sales in the us had dropped to less than 27000 despite still selling much better in other markets such as europe indonesia and india as well as continued success with their k cars in japan the american branch of the company was 346 million us dollars in debt suzuki filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in november of 2012 but this would mean only the end of their car sales in the u.s and canada sales of their motorcycles atvs and marine engines would continue much to the relief of fans of suzuki who preferred their non-automotive products some may say that suzuki's court battle with consumer reports and the samurai rollover scandal may have been the biggest factor in their ultimate demise in the u.s but by the mid-2000s when their sales reached their peak it's likely many consumers forgot or simply never even knew about it instead it may be simply that suzuki couldn't create vehicles that stood out from their competitors there's been some talk recently about trying to import the jimny which is still in production in japan and india back to the us but it's highly unlikely thanks to all the american legal requirements which the chimney simply doesn't have and wouldn't be cheap to engineer although like any japanese car that's over 25 years old older chimneys can be imported to the us.

       If you have one of them or any other suzuki that has survived in the u.s or canada let us know suzuki new gym thanks for Reading if you like this post click the like button and follow to my blogspot what is it looks like a giant suzuki it's a giant suzuki and it's moving fast it's a giant suzuki a giant suzuki a giant what here is a news flash from the Blogspot a giant suzuki has been cited on highway 316. oh my giant suzuki if you once owned a car from the 80s to mid-2000s that you rarely see today and would like it featured in a future blog leave a reply in the comments or contact me at the email shown here see you next time you. #SUZUKIUSA #AMERICANCARS #SALESDECLINE