Junkyard Find: 2004 Suzuki Verona

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

What American car buyers in 2004 really needed was a lengthened Daewoo Leganza with Giorgetto Giugiaro styling, a transverse-mounted straight-six engine, and Suzuki badging … or so GM Daewoo Auto & Technology believed. Not so surprisingly, American car buyers weren’t so excited about the Verona, and these things are now nearly as rare as the similarly puzzling Isuzu Oasis.

Here’s one that I spotted in a San Francisco Bay Area self-service yard.

Why would anyone have bought this car instead of a Camry or Taurus? Lots of standard features for cheap and a generous warranty! On the downside, Verona buyers got supersonic depreciation and an edge-case marque.

Fitting a straight-six sideways in a front-wheel-drive car requires narrow cylinder bores and promises squished fingers for future mechanics. This one made just 155 horsepower, two fewer than the new Camry’s four-cylinder produced in 2004.

It does have S. H. Han’s OK, though.

Cassette and CD! Verona sales were even lower than GM/Daewoo/Suzuki had expected, and the model got the axe after the 2006 model year.

The “6-CYLINDER” animated billboard in this ad is pretty neat.

This Texan dealership wanted Verona shoppers to know that Suzuki was the fastest-growing car company in America.

South Korean-market car ads tend to go Full Macho or Extreme Schmaltz. This one for the KDM version of the Verona takes the latter approach.

Here’s the macho version.

[Images: © 2016 Murille Martin/The Truth About Cars]





Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • Corey Lewis Think how dated this 80s design was by 1995!
  • Tassos Jong-iL Communist America Rises!
  • Merc190 A CB7 Accord with the 5 cylinder
  • MRF 95 T-Bird Daihatsu Copen- A fun Kei sized roadster. Equipped with a 660cc three, a five speed manual and a retractable roof it’s all you need. Subaru Levorg wagon-because not everyone needs a lifted Outback.
  • Merc190 I test drive one of these back in the day with an automatic, just to drive an Alfa, with a Busso no less. Didn't care for the dash design, would be a fun adventure to find some scrapped Lancia Themas or Saab 900's and do some swapping to make car even sweeter. But definitely lose the ground effects.
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