Suzuki Kizashi 3 Concept
It’s been awhile since Suzuki offered a large car in the U.S., and we’re hoping the automaker is getting close with the Kizashi 3, the third and final offering in its sports-sedan-concept series.
The Kizashi 3 will be made public at the 2008 New York auto show. It follows the Kizashi 2 from the 2007 Tokyo auto show, and the original Kizashi from the 2007 Frankfurt auto show.
The first car was a two-door, low-slung wagon. The Kizashi 2 was a four-door version that Suzuki described as a “crossover sports wagon.” This third installment is billed as a “closer to production” vision of the sports sedan that will become the company’s flagship.
The concepts were developed by Suzuki’s Advanced Design Group. We expect the eventual production sedan to have a 3.6-liter V-6 (part of the GM engine family but assembled at a Suzuki engine plant in Sagara, Japan). The same engine is under the hood of the Suzuki XL7, the automaker’s largest vehicle, but in the case of the Kizashi, we anticipate a six-speed automatic transmission, as opposed to the five-speed in the XL7.
Suzuki has not had a mid-size or large sedan, premium or otherwise, on the market since it discontinued the Verona mid-size sedan—a version of the second-generation Daewoo Magnus—at the end of the 2006 model year. Suzuki has said its replacement will be all Suzuki and will likely get a new name to herald its Japanese roots.
Aimed upmarket, the D-segment-sized Kizashi would be Suzuki’s largest sedan to date, and the concepts telegraph the automaker’s future design direction. When the Kizashi does finally come to market, we expect a lineup of a sedan, a crossover with four-wheel drive, and perhaps a wagon, starting with the sedan in 2009, followed by the other body styles a year later.
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