Suzuki cars - decent quality?

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Parents just bought one of these. I love driving it, feels very solid, nice height and ground clearance. I've owned a couple Suzuki's in the past and they have been very good cars. The only unknown is the long term reliability of the new cvt transmission they are putting in the 2010 sx4. Since that's a 2009 it would be the tried and tested 4spd. Suzuki has been doing 4wd for a long time.
 
I'd be worried about the availability of parts for it in the future, and the dealership network in case of warranty work. Suzuki dealers are few and far in between around here.
 
SX4 is a real Suzuki (Japanese). Its a good car.

Many of the Suzuki Badged Cars sold in the USA are rebadged Daewoo (Korean). Ill give you one shot at guessing the Korean cars with the least refinement and worst reliability...
 
This Suzuki is a little different than the others. All the cars in recent years were GM products. My friend has one and it's made by Daewoo (which is controlled by GM) in Korea, but with an engine and tranmission built by GM in Australia. It hasn't been a great car, from what he tells me.

But, the SX4 was co-developed by Suzuki and Fiat. It's sold as a Fiat in some other countries I believe.

I test drove one and I liked it.


EDIT- I got sniped by Gene.
 
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Suzuki has long been a great engine builder.

The powertrain on my Swift was bulletproof with abusive driving practices and minimal maintenance.

Door handles and window handles were complete garbage. I don't know how much of that was Suzuki and how much of that was CAMI where it was built.

The current round of Suzukis have much improved interior components.

I see lots of long-lived Sidekicks and early Vitaras and the GM Theta platformed Vitaras seem to be exception.
 
Friends bought the AWD wagon when it first came out... nothin but brake issues and stupid stuff breaking, seat adjuster, stereo, etc. got to the point that Suzuki bought it back after a year. strong motor though and it was a new model, so that may have had somethin to do with it.
 
i have an 89 side kick.good motor and tranny ,body was pretty solid.plastics----well they obviously were not designed for southeastern u.s. summer temps and humidity.window regulators are the worst.i don't think you can find a driver side manual regulator aftermarket and any zuki that you find in a junkyard will most likely stripped of it and any usable plastics.
 
I saw a newer Suzuki on the road and I so much liked the style of the car that I went over the web to look it up!
 
Here are my experiences with Suzuki:

2000 Suzuki Vitara 4dr 4X4 - I beat the [censored] out of this little truck and it would just not die. It was the main family vehicle for 10-11 years and moonlighted as my hunting and fishing truck and it went places I would never think it would go. I finally traded it in for the Nitro last June. It was reliable and I really never did much as far as maintenance (my pre- BITOG days)

2004 Suzuki Swift+ - currently running this little hatchback as our second vehicle and it has been nothing but a pleasure to drive & maintain and has been trouble free for the 6+ years we have owned it. It does it's job well being inexpensive, and good on gas.

We have a Suzuki dealership in my town so parts and service is only a stones throw away. Suzuki has recently partnered with VW, so we can expect to see some good things.

As far as the SX4, I have only heard good things. The SX4 is AWD and Suzuki has always had good 4x4 systems.

Check out the Suzuki Kizashi for what the future of Suzuki holds.
 
The Kizashi as said above looks absolutely brilliant. Beautiful looking car. I also really like the SX4. I have not test driven any but sometimes wish I'd test driven at least the SX4. I've never owned one, but I think they are rising up as a major player... (hopefully at least)
 
Folks have a 2002 Suzuki Aerio they bought new. It's now got about 135k miles on it.

AFAIK, it's been pretty reliable - even survived a bad 'driven overheating' event, w/o any long-term problems.

It has all digital instruments, and they still work just fine - I thought they might become a problem after 6-7 years.

They were/are thinking of replacing it this summer; but can't really find a good reason to - it still works just fine.
 
Originally Posted By: stephen9666
This Suzuki is a little different than the others. All the cars in recent years were GM products. My friend has one and it's made by Daewoo (which is controlled by GM) in Korea, but with an engine and tranmission built by GM in Australia. It hasn't been a great car, from what he tells me.


Those were the Daewoo-zukis. The Verona, Forenza, and Reno were all Daewoos.

They aren't terrible cars, they just aren't really good at anything. They don't get great gas mileage compared to other cars of similar size, they don't ride well, don't handle well, aren't quick or fast, aren't pretty (well, the Verona was fairly attractive)

IIRC the engine in the Forenza/Reno is the cast iron block Holden version of the Ecotec. I've actually seen quite a few well into the 100,000+ mile range. I'm not saying it was pleasant racking up all those miles, but they did it.
 
Our Tracker/Vitara has been OK, I do find I don't really like suzuki motors in anything, but it does the job without complaints. Have your friend troll around suzuki-forums.com for a while, that will have all the common SX-4 problems if there are many.
 
I've got a 08 mt sx4 with about 40k miles.

It's a great car, had no warranty works besides a knock sensor.

The only bad thing about this car is fuel effiency and tank size. You can't really do more than 220 miles on a tank because it holds about 10-11 galons of fuel (they had to make it smaller on the awd model for the driveshaft). So tell you're friend that he'll always be at gaz stations.

Besides this I would totaly recommend this car, cheap and reliable. Really good traction in winter (I've got 4 studded winter tire on mine).Well optionned from factory, leather steering, rear disk brakes, alloy etc....
 
While working as a service writer and manager of a small repair shop, I had very few suzuki's come through the door. When they did, the cost of parts were just plain stupid! The ONLY place I could find parts for customers cars was the dealership and they knew that they were the only place you could find parts. Even though we were in a relatively large Canadian city (Calgary Alberta), there were only 2 dealers and when I needed regular replacement parts, the wait time was easily over a week causing the customers cars to sit overnight in our shop.

Sure they have great reliability (similar to Honda, Toyota etc.) but when you consider the cost and downtime when small, usually inexpensive repairs are needed I'd much rather have a comparable Ford product wher I can easily source replacement parts from a variety of local jobbers rather than relying on the dealer.
 
Originally Posted By: Stanley Rockafeller
While working as a service writer and manager of a small repair shop, I had very few suzuki's come through the door. When they did, the cost of parts were just plain stupid! The ONLY place I could find parts for customers cars was the dealership and they knew that they were the only place you could find parts. Even though we were in a relatively large Canadian city (Calgary Alberta), there were only 2 dealers and when I needed regular replacement parts, the wait time was easily over a week causing the customers cars to sit overnight in our shop.

Sure they have great reliability (similar to Honda, Toyota etc.) but when you consider the cost and downtime when small, usually inexpensive repairs are needed I'd much rather have a comparable Ford product wher I can easily source replacement parts from a variety of local jobbers rather than relying on the dealer.


Good point. When I owned my Swift, I could get a lot of parts for it at any Chevrolet/Geo dealer. In fact the cheesy window crank handles were cheaper at the Chevy/Geo house than the Suzuki dealer. Slightly different color but I didn't care.
 
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