Suzuki to Sell Nissan Trucks

Frank Williams
by Frank Williams

From the "Things That Leave Us Scratching Our Heads" Department: Nissan is going to build rebadged Frontier pickups to be sold as Suzukis. According to a press release on PRNewswire, the Suzuki Something-or-the-Other will begin rolling out of Nissan's Smyrna, Tennessee plant sometime in 2008. The truck is planned only for the North American market, where the Nissuki will join rebadged Daewoos in Suzuki dealers' showrooms. Maybe Suzuki should talk with Mitsubishi, Mazda and Isuzu about their success in trying to sell a mildly restyled and rebadged truck already sold by a larger auto maker, before Nissan starts cranking them out in numbers.

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  • Jthorner Jthorner on Dec 13, 2007

    Suzuki is huge in India with over 50% share in that market. Nissan/Renault have signed a deal with Suzuki to build cars in India. http://www.thehindu.com/2006/09/07/stories/2006090705411700.htm I imagine that the small pickup for Suzuki USA is just one of the ways Nissan is paying back Suzuki for help in the huge emerging India market. Suzuki USA is mostly a reseller of other people's stuff with GM-Daewoo being the major supplier. I guess there is a question of what happens to Suzuki's access to GM-Daewoo products over time now that GM has sold off most of it's holdings in Suzuki.

  • Rtz Rtz on Dec 13, 2007

    The people at Suzuki Motor Corporation are idiots. How can their motorcycle division build Hayabusa's and GSX-R1000's and their car division build the lamest cars year after year? They should build cheap sports cars that complement their sport bikes. Honda owns the import "performance" market. Toyota doesn't even exist in it(Supras are like Grand Nationals, old history, limited numbers, fluke vehicles, freaks of nature, does not compute; they exist in their own realm and aren't relevant in the grand scheme of things. For all intents and purposes, unless you own one, they don't exist in our day to day lives.). If Suzuki wants to sell economy cars, they need to aim for 50 and 60 plus miles per gallon. If they want to sell low cost cars, they need to all be sub $10,000. Even then, it will have PT Cruiser syndrome. Sure it's cheap, but no one wants one. Just like KIA's and DAEWOO's. Like all those bargain table books at the book store and bins full of discounted computer games. You can't even give that stuff away. Suzuki needs an identity. They are just bland and generic. They outright lie on their TV advertisements by suggesting the cars they build are as much fun or exciting as their motorcycles. That's flat out offensive and insulting. Has Suzuki ever turned a profit with their auto line in the USA? That would be interesting to know and impressive if they have. Who are they fooling with a rebadged Nissan? Those Isuzu trucks sell real good(NOT!). Why bother taking a Mazda built truck and badging it as a Ford? Why do we need that sort of redundancy? All it does is dilute and pollute the market. There's not enough room or need for all these duplicate vehicles. Camaro/IrocZ/Z28/FireBird/TransAm Pointless. All just Camaro's too me. Roush, Saleen, Shelby? Paying for a brand name and a label. It's still just a Mustang. And can they even beat the Z06 at that? The entire point of them should be that they can beat Z06's!!

  • Widewing Widewing on Dec 21, 2007

    Suzuki builds some excellent vehicles. If you haven't driven the new SX4 Sport sedan, give it a try. It's probably the best of its class, with great handling, brakes and terrific build quality.

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