Suzuki Australia’s Managing Director Masaaki Kato has said that the company will most likely discontinue the Kizashi sedan. The Kizashi has failed to make much of an impression on mid size sedan buyers and Kato feels that much of this has to do with the manufacturer’s poor timing, as the Kizashi came just before the US was hit by an economic crisis in 2009.
“That’s my headache, Kizashi was a very unlucky car. We had so many arguments about the question: how to handle Kizashi. At that time, frankly speaking, we should not have introduced the car into the market in 2009,” Masaaki Kato told Australia’s Drive.
“But you see, we made a big investment to develop this car… After heavy and hard discussion, we decided to introduce this Kizashi,” Kato added. He further told that the company commenced development of turbocharged and V6 performance variants of Kizashi, along with an estate model, but quite suddenly, all these plans “completely disappeared.”
Also working against the sedan was its steep price. The sedan, at AU$ 29,990 in Australia/€26,990 in Germany, never exactly stood out as a value for money proposition. Making matters even worse is the availability of just one engine- a 176hp 2.4-liter gasoline motor that isn’t exactly frugal.
The Kizashi has been on sale in India since some years now and comes to us via CBU (Completely Built Unit) route. The sales performance by the sedan in Indian market has been pretty dismal and such has been the state of affairs that MSIL could manage to sell just one unit of Kizashi sedan last month! The Kizashi did receive a major price cut late last year, bringing the selling price drastically down, but it seems that the final attempt by MSIl to push the sales of its flagship sedan hasn’t really been successful.