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Five-door forbidden fruit: Suzuki Jimny gets bigger

If you’ve always wanted a Suzuki Jimny, but import laws and its small two-door body style held you back, thereÂ’s some good news. No, you cannot import a new one to the United States. Sorry to burst that bubble. The good news is that Suzuki just announced a five-door Jimny for people needing more space, at least if they live in India. The third-generation Jimny landed in 2018 and has remained a three-door since, making this a significant development for off-road fans and people upset with Suzuki for not selling it in the United States. Maruti Suzuki holds massive market share in India, so itÂ’s not surprising to see the automaker coming out with new Jimny variants. The pint-sized SUV measures more than a foot longer than its three-door counterpart but still carries the modelÂ’s signature upright boxy shape and modest accommodations. A 1.5-liter engine making 105 horsepower comes paired with a five-speed manual or four-speed automatic and four-wheel drive. Though small, the Jimny five-door manages serious off-roading with a 36-degree approach angle, a 50-degree departure angle, and a 24-degree breakover angle. The SUV rides on 15-inch wheels and three-link rigid axle suspension with coil springs. It also features an old-school ladder frame, which helps deliver that impressive off-road ability, but likely impacts on-road comfort. Jimny buyers get a surprising number of niceties, including a 9-inch infotainment display with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. ThereÂ’s also a rearview camera and a premium stereo option. The top Alpha trim level adds push-button start, cruise control, and a leather-wrapped steering wheel. We donÂ’t have pricing details for the five-door Jimny, but the three-door variant starts at around $24,000 in other markets, such as Mexico. Suzuki will build the Jimny at its facility in Gurugram, India. Orders are open now, with deliveries planned to start in May. The automaker said it would soon expand the five-door to other markets, including Latin America and Australia.      

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.

Suzuki Vitara shows its face ahead of Paris debut

The death of Suzuki's American automotive operations can be chalked up to many, many things. One thing it cannot be blamed on, however, is the arguable goodness of its products. The company's criminally underrated offerings included the Kizashi sedan, the SX4 compact and your author's personal favorite, the Grand Vitara.
The GV rode on a radically different version of General Motors' Theta platform, which underpins the American manufacturer's current crop of crossovers, like the Chevrolet Equinox. What made the Grand Vitara special, though, was that it wasn't just another run-of-the-mill CUV. Buying the cheapest model meant living with rear-wheel drive rather than the Theta's typical front drive. Spend a bit of money, though, and you'd end up with an honest-to-goodness off-roader, sporting selectable four-wheel drive complete with low-range gearbox. It also comfortably sat five, was reasonably efficient and was quite handsome. We aren't totally sure how it turned into this.
This, of course, being the new Vitara (it replaces the Escudo, the vehicle Americans know as the Grand Vitara), and it will make its global debut at October's Paris Motor Show, which has ditched its four-wheel-drive system for a part-time all-wheel-drive system called Allgrip.