Some Of The Last Suzuki Cars In America Were Absolutely Bonkers Examples Of Badge Engineering

You know what I’ll never forget? Suzuki selling cars in America. Although the brand wasn’t quite able to make it work, it enjoyed cult classic highs like the legendary Grand Vitara, the respected Kizashi, and yes, the inimitable Swift. I can already feel myself growing old, picturing my aged future visage with unmanageable amount of nose hair telling my great-nieces and great-nephews of the days when a second Japanese S-brand sold cars to us. However, doing so will require telling them the whole truth.

See, the 2000s were an almost unfathomably weird time for Suzuki in America because although the crotch-rocket business was booming thanks to a near-endless supply of squids believing Gixxers would make great starter bikes, Suzuki’s car lineup was conflicted to say the least. Heck, a bunch of later Suzukis weren’t really Suzukis at all, but attempts to disguise other automakers’ cooking as authentic home-prepared cuisine.

The seeds for this were sown in 1981, when GM purchased a 5.3 percent stake in Suzuki. From there, GM began exporting the Suzuki Cultis under a variety of names including the Chevrolet Swift, and then in 1986, Suzuki and General Motors Canada went into business together by announcing the construction of the CAMI plant in Ingersoll, Ont., a joint venture facility still used by GM today. In 1998, GM upped its equity stake in Suzuki to 10 percent, and in 2002, GM bought the remains of Daewoo. This is where things start to get bizarre.

Deranged Daewoos

Here’s a fun fact: For a brief period of time, you could find more “Top Gear” Reasonably Priced Car, um, cars at an American Suzuki dealership than in any other brand’s showroom. That’s because in addition to the Aerio, which was sold in Europe as the Liana and used as Top Gear’s first reasonably priced car, it also sold Top Gear’s second reasonably priced car, the Chevrolet Lacetti. From 2004 until 2008, the Lacetti hatchback made it to America as the Suzuki Reno, while the sedan was sold as the Suzuki Forenza. It was an odd choice seeing as how the similarly priced Suzuki Aerio made more power, was available with all-wheel-drive, and seemed like a more interesting car overall, but that’s the way the cookie crumbled.

In 2005, Car And Driver tested the Reno and produced a photo containing some of the most sidewall roll I’ve seen in the past 20 years. The magazine didn’t seem to mind the Reno too much, giving modest praise to its equipment levels, design, and weirdly enough, its rear suspension. As per Car And Driver:

The so-called dual-link rear suspension (essentially, a strut with lateral and longitudinal locating links) is well behaved, curtailing unwanted yaw even when an overly ambitious corner entry results in all four tires letting go. Hey, we do this so you don’t have to.

Demerits reportedly included a vague shifter, an engine that didn’t have much beyond the midrange, and subpar steering, but considering the Reno didn’t have much of Suzuki’s own handiwork in it, this compact seemed at least competent. Strangely, Canada didn’t get the Lacetti as a Suzuki, but instead received the sedan, the hatchback, and a wagon as the Chevrolet Optra. Oh, and both Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands also got the Optra, albeit only as a sedan.

If selling two completely different cars in the same segment at the same time isn’t bonkers enough for you, might I interest you in a freaking inline-six slung sideways between the strut towers of a midsize sedan? This is the 2004 to 2006 Suzuki Verona, which was a Daewoo Magnus, which had a transversely-mounted 2.5-liter inline-six developed with expertise from Porsche, according to Wards Intelligence. Featuring 155 horsepower and 177 lb.-ft. of torque and hitched exclusively to a four-speed automatic, it was a bit shit, but it was interesting. Not interesting enough for Suzuki, which mis-listed it as a 2.4-liter engine in the official 2004 Verona spec sheet, but interesting to those of us who are easily amused. I’m one of them. Plus, this inline-six was smooth and came attached to a car absolutely loaded with equipment.

I’ve written a much deeper dive on the Suzuki Verona before if you’re interested in learning more about this oddity, but like the Reno and Forenza, Suzuki Canada didn’t find it suitable for passing off as homegrown. North of the border, it was sold as the Chevrolet Epica, which is also the name it was sold under in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. I’m sensing a pattern here.

However, there was one Daewoo product good enough to be sold as a Suzuki in Canada, and that was the Swift+, also known to North Americans as the Chevrolet Aveo. Developed and originally sold as the Daewoo Kalos, it was a marked departure from the tiny little Swift of the ’90s and early 2000s, and while it wasn’t quite up to the grade of its predecessor, it was cheap and better than walking. Interestingly, it was also only sold as the Swift+ in Canada, never making it to the USA as a Suzuki.

Xtra Large 7-Seater

Remember how I mentioned the CAMI plant in Canada earlier? Well, in the mid-2000s, it was pivoting away from producing the Chevrolet Tracker and Suzuki Grand Vitara, and towards production of the Chevrolet Equinox and Pontiac Torrent.  Thankfully, Suzuki also needed a new XL-7 around this time, a three-row SUV with a name standing for Xtra Large 7-seater. So how do you turn a first-generation Equinox into a three-row crossover? Well, you start by somehow shrinking the wheelbase by one tenth of an inch. Look, your guess is as a good as mine. Regardless, the second-generation XL-7 was 8.4 inches longer than a first-generation Equinox, and all of that length was outside of the wheelbase.

From there, an optional third row of seats was fitted, designers drew up some of the weirdest composite headlights ever offered in North America, and one of the most convoluted engine schemes in modern history was set into motion — Suzuki would build GM’s disastrous 3.6-liter V6 under licence in Japan, then ship these engines across the Pacific, have them transported across most of Canada, and then put them into Canadian-built crossover utility vehicles for North American consumption.

Unsurprisingly, the second-generation XL-7 didn’t seem particularly Suzuki. If you squinted really hard in the dark, the dashboard looked like it came from a W-body Impala, and so much was lifted from the GM parts bin that even the alloy wheels pictured in early brochure photos were from the Pontiac Torrent. It just didn’t seem all that appealing beyond offering fairly strong value in lower trims with seven seats, and the market quickly spoke.

From the start of 2009 through May 11, the CAMI plant in Ingersoll made four XL-7s. Not 4,000 or 400, four. In addition to a shift in demand, GM came out with its own line of three-row crossovers that were larger, better appointed, and more spacious than the XL-7 in 2006, meaning this whole endeavor of stretching an Equinox to make an XL-7 probably wasn’t the smartest use of resources. If it weren’t for the CAMI plant, you’d really wonder why Suzuki didn’t just rebadge a GMC Acadia. However, even though XL-7 production ended in 2009, it wasn’t the last car Suzuki rebadged.

Where In The World?

See, one year before the end of the second-generation XL-7’s life, Suzuki announced that it would be rebadging another automaker’s midsize pickup truck. It wasn’t a worked-over Chevrolet Colorado, it was a Nissan Frontier with a new front end and a new name: Suzuki Equator. While this seems a little out out pattern compared to previous work with GM, it makes perfect sense. Not only was the Equator a better culture fit for Suzuki, being a Japanese truck, it also seemed like a culture fit for Suzuki’s other customers. Forget cars for a second, the brand’s more known for motorcycles and powersports, and people with toys need something to haul those toys around.

At first, things seemed promising. The Equator won Peterson’s 4Wheel and Off-Road’s 2009 4×4 Of The Year award, you could get it with goodies like a locking rear differential, a brace of skid plates, it was a few hundred dollars cheaper than an equivalent Frontier, and it came with a longer warranty than Nissan offered. Sadly, it didn’t pick up many buyers. From 2009 through 2013, just 8,382 Equator pickup trucks found homes across America, and Canada pulled the plug on the project early after the 2010 model year.

What Does It Mean?

Looking back, a number of things conspired to push Suzuki out of the American and Canadian car markets. From a small dealer network to shifting consumer tastes in the 2000s towards large SUVs, things just weren’t moving in the brand’s favor overall.

Still, I can’t help but wonder if part of the issue with Suzuki in America was that towards the end, it didn’t sell enough proper Suzukis. The little SX4 with its available all-wheel-drive was great, the Kizashi is still respected by those in the know today, and the 2006 to 2013 (2014 in Canada) Grand Vitara was an excellent little SUV. There are good reasons we often forget about Suzuki’s badge-engineered models, mostly because they didn’t have a solid sense of identity. They seemed to be more of an effort of throwing stuff at the wall to see what would stick rather than true examples of what Suzuki could do.

Top graphic car images via Suzuki; emblem image via Ebay seller

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