The reason Suzuki is allowing Fiat to rebadge and sell this Suzuki engineered vehicle was in exchange for Suzuki being able to use and build the Fiat Diesel engine to use in Suzuki cars in other parts of the world such as India.

The STYLING of the SX4 was done by an Italian firm ItalDesign with obvious good results. But once again, to clarify, THE SX4 IS 100% SUZUKI ENGINEERED AND DESIGNED, >NOT< Fiat. It is based on the Swift platform.
The Fiat Sedici is a rebadged Suzuki SX4 which in some cases can come equiped with a fiat diesel engine.
Europe gets most of its SX4’s from the Suzuki plant in Hungary.
North America however gets their SX4’s direct from the Suzuki Plant in Japan. Japanese engineered, Japanese built.

As far as Suzuki selling Korean Re-badges you have GM to thank for that. After GM took over Daewoo they decided that the only car of the Daewoo line-up that they made sense to add to their own and sell in the US was what would become the Aveo. The other Daewoo offerings they felt might tend to compete for sales with GM’s existing American built cars. Thus, they passed on several daewoo models to Suzuki to be sold under the Suzuki badge in it’s US Suzuki dealerships. Suzuki initially agreed to this with the assurances from GM that they were going to dramatically improve the quality assurance programme at the Daewoo plants in Korea.
This worked well for Suzuki at the time since the North American division of Suzuki was in full gear in it’s attempt to expand its dealership network in North America. The main thing holding them back was a lack of actual car models to sell. At the time Suzuki only had the XL7, Vitara, and its lone and only car, the Aerio.

Not sufficient offerings to achieve the type of sales goals they were looking for or to attract car dealers to pick up the Suzuki line.

By adding the Reno and Forenza, this allowed them to do precisely what they what they had planned, with new Suzuki dealerships popping up all over the country.
But alas, GM’s promises to dramatically improve Daewoo’s quality assurance programme never came thru… and the reliability of the Korean re-badges didn’t hold up to Suzuki’s desired level for any car with its name on it.

Thus Suzuki cancelled its agreement with GM to sell the Daewoo models in the US, opting instead to focus on its own Suzuki platforms, and gradually increase its own offerings.

The Suzuki Swift (not the canadian swift+) and the SX4 are first fruits of Suzuki’s new approach and design. Soon North America will get the newest generation of the Swift.

Unfortunately because of worsening world wide economic condition and the severe impact this is having on auto-sales, Suzuki had decided to postpone it’s launch of the mid-sized sedan in North America named Kizashi. Instead Suzuki will focus on its smaller iterations such as the new A-Star which will be arriving shortly on European shores and will offer entry level buys a well engineered car at a low price and fantastic fuel economy as well as the lowest carbon emissions in the industry.

SX4 too is being improved with new gearing and soon will see a 6-speed manual as well as VVT as standard to improve fuel standards and offer lower revs and hwy speeds.

As far as the turbo edition, as someone already stated, you can order a turbo edition SX4 thru your dealership which will come from Road Race Motorsports.
Suzuki IS currently testing both a Diesel SX4 in Canada as well as its own in-house turbo set up for possible sales in North America. Suzuk is still not convinced there is a market here for a Turbo SX4.
The Diesel SX4 being tested in Canada is getting very good response so hopefully if Suzuki can ride out the current worldwide economic chaos, we may soon see an Diesel SX4 in North America too.

As for the SX4 WRX, that racing programme unfortunalely has been cancelled, again due to the worldwide economic shakedown.
Even Subaru has pulled out of the WRC for the same reason.
We have yet to see what the worldwide economic meltdown will mean to the big auto manufacturors, but there is already talk in Japan of possible mergers on the table… with the end result of creating a “Japanese Big-3″.

Does anyone have any more exact or accurate info or read anything new on when the SX4 turbo, WRC version will be available?

Well, while it’s not yet a factory option, for around $4500 you can buy the Road Race Motorsports SX4 Turbo Kit. Road Race Motorsports does have a working relationship with Suzuki, so official sanction of this kit is at least a possibility.

You can find a discussion of the current version of the RRM turbo kit at this SX4Club.com thread. Note that it’s reported to deliver 220 whp….

Confused? You won’t be, after this episode of Soap.

According to Suzuki, SX4 stands for:
S – Sport
X – Crossover (x-over)
4 – 4-wheel drive

So the Suzuki SX4 is a Crossover SUV, period. It is not a wagon! I am sick and tired of looking at monster SUV’s and being told that being huge is the way they all are. I have been looking for a real small SUV for a while now, and am pleased to have found one in the SX4. I no longer have to drag tons of excess sheet metal around town.

No, I do not work for Suzuki – I am just a regular car buyer. Actually, I live in Chongqing, China. Here the SX4 has a smaller engine (1600 liter) but is very well equipped. Mine has a wonderful premium sound system (364 watts of sound in the little SX4 box!) and leather throughout. Car driving is tight here, where everyone pushes themselves into small spaces. So a smaller car is easier to manage.

As for being a good off-road vehicle,…
1. SUV cars needs to have good ground clearance. SX4 is 6.9 inches compared with 4 inches on the Honda Fit.
2. Should have a strong chassis-axle-wheel system. This is the most distinctive aspect of the SX4, with its 16″ wheels (in China) and a heavier chassis, which makes the car heavier than the Honda Fit.
3. Should be a 5-door hatchback, enabling large and flexible storage space behind the back seat.
4. Should have a full-size rear seat for passengers, which can be converted into storage space.
5. Should have an adequately strong engine that does well when traversing off-road terrain.
6. Should be sporty/fun to drive. The SX4 certainly is.

Clearly, Suzuki went straight at making a small SUV. I think they did quite well.

The SX4 IS A CROSSOVER SUV, not a station wagon or a tiny city car such as the Honda Fit or Toyota Yaris. The SX4 is the first of a new class of cars – a small, true Crossover SUV.

We recently aquired a Suzuki franchise in our dealer group. The vehicle line to me looked like Hyundai cira 1995. I took each one around the block once so I can say I drove it in case I may have a client I may have ’switch’ to one(with the aforementioned credit scoring in the previous post..). All were the same thing: ‘eh, looks ok, hey-started on the first try-not bad, engine a little rough, steering clunks at full lock, brakes a little weak…oh well I drove it’.

HOWEVER I noticed in the corner of the lot we had a couple of the little SX4’s. Styling looked like a little european city car. A little closer and it had 17″ wheels with a decent set of shoes-hmm. 4 wheel disc brakes, all the trim looks nice and tidy-hmm. 146hp on the window sticker…Well I grabbed the keys and the interior has a basic but taut look to the components, a little jeweling here, some surface texture there-really nothing bad at all. The view out is definitey strange at first, but very ’smart’ looking overall.

Started it up and moved it around the lot-engine smooth and responsive, no thunking or rubbery feeling in the suspension or steering, shifter nice and crisp-hmm. Well I went off for an hour and took it to lunch and was thoroughly impressed in every way. Even the sedan which at first looks like an echo starts to win you over. But overall a very sound and refined car with very tossable handling, and for the price-outstanding! It definitely gives you the feeling of having taken something right off a tightly packed city street in Europe and dropping it right in the middle of an American dealership chain parking lot. What a delightful little car completely off the radar here…

Being that we have an open floor(we can sell everything in our chain of dealers), I snuck a few over to the Ford dealer I work to put on static display. Of course me-’Mr Hotrod’ got quite a few jokes from my fellow workers as to how much I like the little buggers-after a little salesman on saleman chatting, they quite frequently leave the display pad :) (Reminds me of when I owned an RX7TT in 93 when I picked up a used Miata as a second car that I ended up driving more. All my friends gave me crap about the Miata. I would ask them ‘have you driven one?’ – ‘then shut up, if you want your butt kicked yet again I will gladly pull the TT out of the garage’ and would continue to putt around in the M…)

I now make it a point to show them to anyone looking in the 13-18k range for a new car, and we will probably end up selling more from the Ford store then the Suzuki outlet. When it stands alone by itself, the Suzuki ‘aura’ of the brand as a whole fades away faster and how much of a quirky-cute, fun, and personable little package the SX4 really is shines much more brightly. Great little car for the money, some buyers need to turn the brain back on from simply wandering into a Hodoyta dealer for a Yaris/Fit and give this little bugger a try.

Heh, That’s the most I’ve said about a sub-150hp car in a long, long time…

The SX4 was a joint project between Suzuki and Fiat. My understanding is that most of the mechanical design was Suzuki’s, while the visual design was done in Italy. The Fiat version is called the Sedici. European destination cars (both the Suzuki and Fiat versions) are built in Hungary, while cars sold in Canada and the U.S. are built in Japan. I believe there’s also a factory in India for cars sold in India. See

I love Suzuki because their cars are not cookie cutter. They have original designs and they stand behind them. Great Value and customer service is paramount to them.

Drive a SX 4 and you’ll know what I mean. That is, if you can find one – they’re selling fast!
Suzuki Rules!