Toyota and Honda enjoyed lucrative American sales success with the RAV4 and CR-V compact crossovers, which went on sale here for the 1996 and 1997 model years, respectively. Suzuki offered its first-generation Escudo/Vitara here (because the Sidekick, along with being sold by GM with Geo Tracker badging), but its Eighties design had develop into embarrassingly dated by the center Nineties. Something needed to be done; that turned out to be the second-generation Vitara, which appeared here as a 1999 model. Here’s a first-year example, present in a Colorado automobile graveyard recently.
The primary Suzuki-made automobile model sold recent in america was the first-generation Cultus, sold here by GM with Chevrolet Sprint badges starting in 1985 (this after greater than 20 years of Suzuki motorcycles arriving at our shores). The Suzuki Jimny showed up the next 12 months (because the Suzuki Samurai), with increasingly more Suzuki-badged models showing up throughout the Nineties.
As an affiliate of the far-flung GM Empire, Suzuki products sold in america became more Daewoo-ized throughout the 2000s, but there have been at all times some real Suzukis available throughout the ultimate Kizashis and Grand Vitaras.
The Vitara was available in america through the 2003 model 12 months, while the more powerful and usually grander Grand Vitara was sold here all the best way until American Suzuki Motors filed for bankruptcy and gave up on highway-legal four-wheelers after 2013. You may still buy recent Suzuki motorcycles and ATVs to today, after all.
It is a top-trim-level four-door JX+ with four-wheel-drive, so its MSRP was $17,999 (about $34,406 in 2024 dollars). That compares favorably with the similarly equipped 1999 Honda CR-V ($20,450, or $39,091 today) and 1999 Toyota RAV4 ($18,198 today).
The Grand Vitara for ’99 got here with V6 power under the hood, while the regular Vitara made do with 1.6- and a couple of.0-liter straight-fours. That is the two.0-liter, rated at 127 horsepower and 134 pound-feet.
A five-speed manual transmission was base equipment, but the unique buyer of this automobile bought the automated. Unlike the car-based CR-V and RAV4, the 1999-2003 Vitara had a truck-style frame and true four-wheel-drive as a substitute of an idiot-proof all-wheel-drive system.
Collectible? Probably not, but still an interesting piece of Suzuki automotive history.
American Suzuki Motors didn’t seem willing to spend money to do TV commercials for the not-so-grand regular Vitara, so we’ll watch one for its JDM sibling as a substitute.
This Article First Appeared At www.autoblog.com
