Minneapolis Street Sighting: Suzuki Kizashi

As a kid growing up, I noticed all of the Japanese "orphan" brands, and quickly became a fan of most of them; I loved Mazda (and still do), Nissan had a place in my heart, Honda was awesome but made mostly boring cars where I was growing up, and obviously so did Toyota (aside from enthusiast favorites of course.) But there were two brands that quickly gained my respect, and always left me continually curious. Those two brands were Suzuki and Isuzu. And as I got older, I learned that both would share quite a bit in common.  More on that later.

When I was  a child, Suzuki, sold mostly SUVs, but here and there the company did sell cars; not many, though, as Suzuki was (and is) mostly known for producting cheap runabout, durable vehicles like the Sidekick/Vitara and the Samurai.  The firm also produced cars, too, and unfortunately those are mostly forgotten--and seldom seen.

In the 1990s, the Swift 3 door and 4 door held down the minicompact spot in the lineup (as well as being cloned into the Geo Metro), and the later on, and Esteem was added. That little car was replaced by the Aerio sedan and hatchback. Fast forward to 2007 and the Suzuki car lineup had been dwindled to one--enter the SX4. It came (like the Aerio) as a four-door sedan, and a five-door hatchback/SUV with available AWD for snow climates and wet roads. All the while, Suzuki still gave the US its Vitara SUV as well.

But, dealer networking (and the GM empire) was not kind to Suzuki. Dwindling sales figures and sparse availablity hindered the automakers chances even more; but the struggling Japanese firm wasn't ready to bow out of the United States just yet. They wanted to prove that building a midsize car wasn't completely out of their Forte. (Sorry, Kia).

The Kizashi came out in the fall of 2009 as a 2010 model, and from the start, sales were slow; unfortunately the cause for slow sales is the result of a variety of factors. Due to slow sales projections, Suzuki's dealer network was already compromised as it is, and during the later part of the 2000s, GM was in turmoil. The company treated Suzuki as a has-ran, and as a result, Suzuki didn't have the budget it needed to run successful ad campaigns. This, combined with an ever-shrinking dealer network could only mean one thing.

Add to this mess, the vehicle wasn't quite midsize, and it wasn't quite compact either. That spells success, if the market is indeed a European country. However, Americans wouldn't buy into this new category, much less so at a price that was deemed "too high" from the getgo.  For $18,999 ("NEW MIDSIZE SEDAN STARTING UNDER $19,000" was the headline that was fixed to full-page ads for these), consumers could enter the cabin of a base model, but options pushed the price closer to $28,000. Not exactly the kind of cash consumers were willing to part with for a brand not very many people know about.

Besides having a crap dealer network, and the peculiar sizing of the vehicle, the amenities weren't bad; sure, it lacked a V6, but the Kizashi had something many non-premium sedans lacked: all wheel drive. This means that in wintry climates, the car is the go-to family sedan for families on a budget.  I only see the top-spec models out driving, but I have seen one base model with hubcaps. I wonder if that model had the six-speed stick?

Moot point, because the only base model I saw was given a nice facelift courtesy of a row of plastic newspaper boxes. Sadly, the Kizashi name fits both that particular car, and the whole Kizashi lineup in general; according to Wikipedia, the name "kizashi" translates to either "sign of things to come" or "omen". Truth be told, the Kizashi was a sign of things to come--just not for the US market. The name also fits as "omen" because, due to slow sales, this marked Suzuki's last real endeavor into the US car market.