The Suzuki Kizashi will in all likelihood be discontinued in the global markets since no direct successor has been planned for the car owing to the poor sales performance since it was first launched way back in 2009. Suzuki developed this car during a boom phase for the company but ended up launching it just before the economic crisis that hit the USA in 2009. Though the company says it had second thoughts about launching this car during 2009, it still went ahead with the launch since it had already invested a huge amount of money in developing the Kizashi and hoped to receive returns on the same.
However, things did not go as per plan for the Japanese automaker and the Kizashi has ever since performed poorly. Suzuki had started working on a turbo-charged engine, V6-powered engine and a wagon based on the Kizashi. But all plans were discarded since the possibility of returns on the investment looked almost next to impossible. Suzuki pulled out of the US market in 2012 and also, its agreement with Volkswagen to develop cars for emerging markets has gone for a toss. This means that the company has to indigenously develop these products resulting in a financial crunch if in case a successor has to be developed for the Kizashi.
One of the other major constraints affecting sales of the Kizashi is the steep pricing of the car. The manual transmission variant was launched at a price of Rs. 16.5 lakhs and Rs. 17.5 lakhs for the automatic transmission variant (ex-showroom, New Delhi). The only engine option offered was the 2.4-litre petrol engine which returned very low fuel efficiency adding to the woes of the Kizashi. Just one unit of the Suzuki Kizashi has been sold in India in the last six months.
The company plans to conduct a local restructure in order to bring down the prices of the Kizashi though it is still unclear as to what margin the price reduction will take place. All these make up for a strong case for the failure of the Suzuki Kizashi around various global markets. As for India, the Maruti Suzuki Kizashi has been discontinued long time back and the stock lying with dealers is still being cleared.
Source – Drive.com.au