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The Suzuki Misano is a concept car inspired by motorcycles

Lately, concept cars have become showcases of touchscreens and batteries, but remember not that long ago when they used to get you excited about automobiles, driving, and design? Now Suzuki, of all companies, has unveiled a concept that brings us back to the stirring show cars from a bygone era. The Suzuki Misano is a low-slung, open-top sports car that asks the question, what if there was a four-wheeled motorcycle? Inspired by the Japanese firm's long history of high-performance two-wheelers, the Misano seeks to "merge the adrenaline rush on two wheels with the driving experience on four." The Misano caps off a thesis project for 24 students of transportation design at Istituto Europeo di Design Torino with collaboration from Suzuki. It has a footprint of 157 inches by 69 inches, or about the length of a BMW i3 and the width of a VW Polo. Its height, however, measures only 39 inches, about 50 percent shorter than a Toyota Yaris hatchback. Like concept cars of old, the Misano does pack in one wacky idea that has no chance of making it into production. It offers a tandem 1+1 seating position, even though it's wide enough for a side-by-side construction. Not only that, but the seats are off to one side. We would've expected a side-mounted motorcycle engine on the other, but it actually contains a trunk and small battery pack. Presumably, the Misano is an EV. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Strictly speaking, it's a barchetta because it has no mechanism for covering the cockpit and barely a windscreen. In lieu of a steering wheel, the car is controlled by what the IED statement calls a motorcycle-inspired yoke. Clear openings in the doors provide a view of the road that only a motorcycle can match. It's not the first time Suzuki has answered the question of a four-wheeled motorcycle. In 2001, it showed the Hayabusa-powered GSX-R/4 concept, which featured a more traditional seating position. The Misano is just the right amount of beautiful design and bonkers-ness that makes you wish for an alternate universe where it would make it into production. But alas, we know it'll be a miracle if Suzuki ever makes a sports car again. If you happen to be in Italy and want to check out the Misano for yourself, it will be on display at the Museo Nazionale dell’Automobile di Torino from Saturday May 15th to Sunday June 6th 2021. Related video: This content is hosted by a third party.

Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, Yamaha to make swappable motorcycle batteries

Just as electric cars are becoming ever more common, the alternative propulsion system is starting to make headway in the motorcycle sphere. Companies such as Harley-Davidson and Zero already have electric models on sale, but other established brands are preparing for the electric future. Among them are the four big Japanese bike builders (Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha) who have a plan to improve electric bike adoption, and make their bikes very appealing. The four companies created an organization back in April 2019 for this sort of purpose called the Swappable Battery Consortium for Electric Motorcycles. And the group has now announced that the manufacturers have agreed on the specifications for motorcycle batteries that can be interchanged among each company's motorcycles. So if you have a Suzuki, you can use a Honda battery, or vice versa. This idea presents quite a few interesting possibilities. The manufacturers could sell bikes with or without batteries, since you might already have a battery from your previous bike, or just another one you own, so you wouldn't have to shell out to buy an entirely new battery. If, for whatever reason, you needed a replacement battery, it should be easy to get one, since the same type would support bikes from a variety of manufacturers. The pipe dream of battery swapping stations might even be feasible because of the standardization and support. And having the batteries relatively easy to remove could be good for apartment dwellers, since they might be able to bring a battery inside to charge. The manufacturers haven't said exactly what the specifications are for these interchangeable batteries, nor when they'll be implemented. But we'll be eagerly awaiting more information in the future. Related video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Osamu Suzuki announces retirement at age 91

TOKYO — Suzuki's 91-year-old chairman, Osamu Suzuki, announced he will retire in June, stepping aside for a new leader to navigate the shift to electric cars and fight off competition from tech firms such as Tesla and Apple. The chairman, after heading for more than four decades the company that his wife's grandfather founded, is leaving his son Toshihiro Suzuki, already president and CEO, to hold the reins of the company. Osamu told reporters on Wednesday he decided to retire after the company welcomed its 100th anniversary last year and its new management plan won approval. But he said he will "remain active" as an adviser. "I will neither run away nor hide," the patriarch said, who has repeatedly declared in the past he will be a "lifelong non-retiree." The company also announced on Wednesday it will invest one trillion yen ($9.45 billion), mostly on electrification technology, over five years. The younger Suzuki said the company needed to respond to a global push towards lower emissions. "Carbon neutral is the focus now. Suzuki must not fall behind this global trend," he said. The announcement by Japan's fourth-biggest automaker comes less than a week after rival Honda appointed a new CEO, who said he would consider alliances to make bold decisions. Carmakers, particularly smaller players such as Suzuki, are seen at a disadvantage due to the huge cost of developing EVs and technologies such as autonomous driving. Suzuki, alongside other automakers such as Mazda and Subaru, tied up with Toyota in 2019 to slash development and manufacturing costs. Osamu Suzuki, who joined Suzuki Motor in 1958, became president in 1978 and doubled as chairman in 2000. During his tenure, the company solidified its presence as the top maker of compact cars. He spearheaded the company's decision to enter its key Indian market in 1983. Maruti Suzuki, which the carmaker owns a majority stake in, is India's top carmaker, selling every second car in the country. In 2016, Suzuki stepped down as CEO to take responsibility for the firm's use of incorrect testing methods to calculate vehicle mileage, but he remained chairman. Osamu, who waved and said "bye-bye" at the end of Wednesday's news conference, will be appointed as senior adviser upon retirement.

Suzuki Hayabusa's return is teased in video

Hang on to your kidneys, the planet's fastest production motorcycle is on its way back. Suzuki has released a teaser video for a new Hayabusa on its global and UK social media channels. Only a few glimpses of the superbike can be seen, but it's enough to get our adrenal glands pumping. Debuting in 1999 during Japan's motorcycle speed wars, the Suzuki Hayabusa immediately rocketed to the forefront, nabbing the world record for fastest street bike. Not only has it been clocked at speeds as high as 194 mph, it's held on to that title for for two decades. Notably, the Hayabusa, named after a peregrine falcon known for reaching 200 mph during its hunting dives, did not compromise everyday comfort and handling in pursuit of all-out speed. However, Suzuki had to dump the bike from its U.S. lineup in 2021, and in Europe it's been absent since 2018 due to emissions regulations. It appears, though, that sabbatical was only temporary. The teaser video gives us a couple of peeks at new hardware. Its iconic five-gauge instrument pod is still there, but updated with a TFT screen in center position. The readouts indicate a number of electronic technologies will return, including S-DMS engine power modes, traction control, lift (anti-wheelie) control, and a quickshifter. An inclinometer showing the angle of lean on either side sits in the middle. Flanking the TFT are a tach and speedometer in their traditional positions on the left and right, respectively, with the latter's needle pegged at 180 mph. Fuel levels and engine temperature sit on opposite ends. Accompanying the visuals are a finely tuned roar and plenty of wind noise as the 'Busa flies around a speedway-type banked circuit. The official reveal will take place on February 5 online at 7 a.m. U.K. time — that's 2 a.m. Eastern. You can watch the unveiling on a virtual forum called the Suzuki Motorcycle Global Salon., which requires registration. Unfortunately, there's not word on whether the Hayabusa will come to the U.S.

Junkyard Gem: 1996 Suzuki Swift SLOKYO DRIFT Edition

General Motors sold plenty of rebadged Suzukis over the decades in the United States, starting with the Chevy Sprint in 1985 and continuing with various Geo- and Chevrolet-badged machines into our current century. The one we remember best remains the fuel-sipping Metro, successor to the Sprint and available here through the 2001 model year. The Sprint and Metro were based on the Japanese-market Cultus, and Suzuki put its own badges on this car in the United States for the 1989 through 2001 model years. That was the Suzuki Swift, a car we know best today for its factory-hot-rod version, the Swift GT. Normally, I wouldn't bother to document an ordinary Canadian-built Swift found in a boneyard, but today's Colorado-found Junkyard Gem boasts some interesting custom touches that make it worth our attention. Get ready for… SLOKYO DRIFT! While countless American owners of Integras and Lancers and 240SXs went nuts with JDM-influenced car decor following the release of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift in 2006, drivers of the tiny and miserably underpowered Metro/Swift econo-commuters felt left out of the party. The owner of this car knew what to do, though: buy some stick-on mailbox letters and slap them on this Swift's hatch. Junkyard-acquired badges adorn every surface of the SLOKYO DRIFT Swift, because why not? It turns out that many Reddit regulars in Colorado spied this car on the street, and so you'll find many references to it on that site. Since any 24-year-old econobox with a manual transmission and a salvage title will be nearly impossible to sell, we can assume this car spent its last few years just one broken part away from The Crusher. Once it needed an expensive repair, it wasn't worth fixing. The original owner's manual and documentation remained in this Swift until the end. It appears that Colorado TV-advertising legend Dealin' Doug moved this iron off his Cherry Creek Dodge lot when it had a mere 5,920 miles on the clock, based on this "Phoney Monroney" I found in the glovebox. 168,925 hard miles later, here it is. At some point, it got totaled, put back together, and stamped with this REBUILT FROM SALVAGE lettering on the door jamb. We think of the Metro/Swift as a three-cylinder car, but many of the later versions got this 1.3-liter "big-block" four-banger under the hood. That's 70 raging horsepower right here. The 5-speed made it more efficient and fun to drive, but killed whatever resale value it may have had.

Here are a few of our automotive guilty pleasures

It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. The world is full of cars, and just about as many of them are bad as are good. It's pretty easy to pick which fall into each category after giving them a thorough walkaround and, more important, driving them. But every once in a while, an automobile straddles the line somehow between good and bad — it may be hideously overpriced and therefore a marketplace failure, it may be stupid quick in a straight line but handles like a drunken noodle, or it may have an interior that looks like it was made of a mess of injection-molded Legos. Heck, maybe all three. Yet there's something special about some bad cars that actually makes them likable. The idea for this list came to me while I was browsing classified ads for cars within a few hundred miles of my house. I ran across a few oddballs and shared them with the rest of the team in our online chat room. It turns out several of us have a few automotive guilty pleasures that we're willing to admit to. We'll call a few of 'em out here. Feel free to share some of your own in the comments below. Dodge Neon SRT4 and Caliber SRT4: The Neon was a passably good and plucky little city car when it debuted for the 1995 model year. The Caliber, which replaced the aging Neon and sought to replace its friendly marketing campaign with something more sinister, was panned from the very outset for its cheap interior furnishings, but at least offered some decent utility with its hatchback shape. What the two little front-wheel-drive Dodge models have in common are their rip-roarin' SRT variants, each powered by turbocharged 2.4-liter four-cylinder engines. Known for their propensity to light up their front tires under hard acceleration, the duo were legitimately quick and fun to drive with a fantastic turbo whoosh that called to mind the early days of turbo technology. — Consumer Editor Jeremy Korzeniewski  Chevrolet HHR SS: Chevy's HHR SS came out early in my automotive journalism career, and I have fond memories of the press launch (and having dinner with Bob Lutz) that included plenty of tire-smoking hard launches and demonstrations of the manual transmission's no-lift shift feature. The 260-horsepower turbocharged four-cylinder was and still is a spunky little engine that makes the retro-inspired HHR a fun little hot rod that works quite well as a fun little daily driver.

Junkyard Gem: 1985 Chevrolet Sprint

For in the 1985 model year, General Motors began selling Chevrolet-badged Suzuki Cultus hatchbacks in California. Sales of the cheap three-cylinder econobox in the rest of North America followed soon after (with the Canadian version known as the Pontiac Firefly), and did pretty well considering the crash in gasoline prices during the middle 1980s. Starting in 1988, the facelifted Sprint became the Geo (and, later on, Chevrolet) Metro. Here's one of the very first Cultuses sold on our shores, found in a San Francisco Bay Area car graveyard. Amazingly, the primitive rear-wheel-drive Chevrolet Chevette remained available all the way through 1987, competing with the thriftier front-wheel-drive Sprint in the same showrooms. For 1988, Pontiac started selling a rebadged Daewoo LeMans, so the Sprint/Metro never lacked for intra-corporate competition. Inside, you'll find the same stuff most mid-1980s Japanese econoboxes got: tough cloth upholstery and long-wearing hard plastics. Suzuki quality in 1985 wasn't quite up to Honda or Toyota levels, but you weren't paying Honda or Toyota prices for the Sprint. MSRP on this car started at $4,949, or about $12,000 in 2020 dollars. The cheapest possible 1985 Chevette cost $5,340, while a new no-frills Ford Escort would set you back $5,620. Subaru, however, could have put you in a punitively unappointed base-model Leone hatchback for just 40 bucks more than the Sprint that year. I think I'd have sprung the extra for a $5,348 Toyota Tercel, a $5,195 Mazda GLC, or— best cheap-commuter deal of all that year— the $5,399 Honda Civic 1300 hatchback. I was 19 years old and driving a Competition Orange 1968 Mercury Cyclone that year, and I recall feeling pity for Chevy Sprint drivers, new-car smell or not. Still, these weren't bad cars for the price, though a Sprint with an automatic transmission was a real character-builder. Got three cylinders and uses 'em all! 48 horsepower from this hemi-headed SOHC 1-liter. The Turbo Sprint — yes, such a car existed — had a howling 70 horsepower. The hood-latch release is a rectangular button that resembles a badge. 1985 Chevy Sprint Commercial The highest-mileage, lowest-priced car you can buy. 1985 holden barina commercial The Australian-market version was the Holden Barina, and the TV ads featured the Road Runner. 1983 SUZUKI CULTUS Ad In its homeland, this car got screaming guitars and a drive through New York City for its TV commercials.

The Suzuki Jimny pickup truck might be the best Jimny

Suzuki showed off a Jimny pickup truck concept at the 2019 Tokyo Auto Salon, and it garnered more positive hype for the already beloved new-generation 4x4. But more than a year later, there are no signs that a production version is coming in the immediate future, if at all. So, members of the aftermarket are building their own. Shropshire Quads out of the United Kingdom takes regular Jimny SUVs and converts them into pickups by lifting the vehicle and adding a metal tub to the rear. Shropshire Quads has been building Jimny pickups for years. The company started doing the conversions on used models but has since grown to add the new Jimny to the operation, as well. Here's how it all started:  We are a small family run business based near Cleobury Mortimer in South Shropshire. We are main agents for Arctic Cat and Kymco ATVs. We felt that there was a niche gap in the agriculture/land management sector for a small lightweight pickup with more creature comforts and reliability than your usual UTVs. We went in search, and following lots of research, we decided that the Suzuki Jimny would be the ideal base vehicle. We now convert quality, low mileage Suzuki Jimny's to pickups using the best quality, factory designed and manufactured components. We hope you agree that we offer the best Suzuki Jimny Pickup on the market. The blue example seen here is the shop's first conversion on a new Jimny. According to Farmer's Weekly, Shropshire Quads orders the factory-manufactured kit that was designed for Suzuki from Austria and is the sole distributor and installer in the United Kingdom. Somebody in New Zealand is running a similar operation. As seen in the photos, the kit can only be installed once the rear portion of the Jimny is chopped off. The kit includes a metal rear bulkhead panel that is equipped with a heated rear screen. Plastic side moldings smooth out the conversion into the bed, which is made of stainless steel and aluminum. The rear tailgate is removable, and Shropshire Quads says the kit uses strong high-quality latches. A recessed fuel filler is mounted with cast aluminum and found on the driver's side. As this is a conversion intended for labor, it can be ordered with a one-inch lift or a three-inch lift. For added utility, the Jimny can be fitted with flotation tires or smaller all-terrain tires. The Jimny was already cool, and having one on the farm sounds like a fun way to do chores.

The Suzuki Jimny is even more awesome with these retro graphics

We already were pretty smitten by the Suzuki Jimny, the pint-sized 4x4 that, sadly, U.S. buyers can only look on from afar. It manages to remind us of its ancestors, the Suzuki Samari and Sidekick (small and basic 4x4s for which collectors and off-roaders are rapidly developing a keen appreciation). At the same time, it also rocks its own modern, mini-G-Wagen vibe. Now Suzuki has rolled out a batch of available decal packages for the Jimny, and we're digging it all the more. As surfaced by Motor1, Suzuki's catalog of accessories for the Jimny includes graphics packages in several different themes. The Offroad style includes tri-color red/gray/black stripes for the top and sides of the hood and under the rear side windows. The wide, lower-body REAL OFFROAD graphic is in red and black, while the finishing touch is a rhino decal for just above the Jimny badge on the tailgate. The Survival style appears to be some kind of camo pattern in black that is applied in a wide band along the upper bodysides. Heritage style ups the retro factor. It features red and gray upper body stripes on a white Jimny. Full the full look, you'll want the hard-shell exterior spare-wheel cover with matching graphics and the red mud flaps. The piece-de-resistance is the Revival style, which embraces the rad Eighties with a white/pink/black zig-zag squiggle on the doors and rear fenders that could have been lifted straight from a Samari. The matching hard-shell spare-wheel cover is a must. All of these prove yet again that the boxy, basic Jimny makes an ideal canvas for customization, and there are plenty more accessory items in that catalog. But we're not going to torture ourselves any further. Featured Gallery Suzuki Jimny decals and accessories Design/Style Suzuki SUV Off-Road Vehicles

Junkyard Gem: 2005 Suzuki Aerio SX Suzuki Works Techno

Americans started buying new Suzuki cars with the debut of the 1985 Chevrolet Sprint and continued doing so through the era of the Geo/Chevrolet Metro and Tracker. Sales of the Samurai mini-SUV took off during the late 1980s, and the Swift sibling to the Metro became available here starting in 1989. The Suzuki American dream— at least the part involving four-wheeled, highway-legal vehicles— came crashing down in 2012, but the 2000s gave American Suzuki fans some interesting-yet-affordable machinery. We got the Kizashi (the side marker lights of which make great jack-O-lantern eyes) and the Suzuki Works Techno package for the Reno and the Aerio in 2005. I found a Reno SWT in California a few months back and figured that would be the first and last Suzuki Works Techno car I ever saw, but then this Aerio appeared in a Colorado car graveyard not long after that. The first two Fast & Furious movies proved to be a tremendous cultural influence on youthful car buyers, and Suzuki created the SWT package to cash in on the hunger for "carbon fiber" and "horsepower" in an affordable package. You didn't get anything that made the car go faster when you checked the SWT box, but you did get alloy wheels and "carbon fiber-styled" stuff all over the place, including the license-plate frame. The SX was the top-of-the-line Aerio in 2005, selling for (well, asking for) $15,449 with front-wheel-drive. That's about $20,900 in 2020 dollars. The hatchback version had some minivan/CUV-ness to its shape. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. In most of the world outside of Japan and North America, this car had Liana badging. Perhaps the most famous Aerio/Liana of all time was the original Reasonably Priced Car on Top Gear UK, a 2002 Liana saloon. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Nobohiro "Monster" Tajima drove a modified-beyond-recognition Aerio hatchback up Pikes Peak in 2001, but it got knocked out by mechanical woes. We can't say what knocked out this Aerio, but it wouldn't have been the interior scent— not with three "Relax" Car-Freshner Little Trees on the job. Sadly, the Relax scent is no longer available. Whatever happened, it involved the car breaking down on a Colorado highway and getting the dreaded "red tag" from the CSP. I see quite a few of these tags on junkyard inmates.