New Grand Vitara under consideration

The venerable Suzuki Grand Vitara will have to soldier on for a while yet, but hints of a replacement have emerged.

During the local launch of the new Vitara last week, motoring.com.au spoke with Andrew Moore, General Manager for Suzuki Australia, about a possible successor to the highly-regarded but now dated Grand Vitara SUV (pictured). According to Moore, Suzuki Australia is pushing the factory to get started on the development of a new GV, which is most likely to be based on the new Vitara, but with a stretched wheelbase and other changes.

"Particularly after seeing Vitara, my comment to [company CEO Toshihiro Suzuki] was 'Grand Vitara... there is a real opportunity for that car in the Australian market, and if you can take that Vitara, stretch it into a Grand Vitara, with all the things that Grand Vitara is known for... we could sell plenty'..." he said.

"And my understanding is that senior management is seriously considering developing a new Grand Vitara."

Such a vehicle could conceivably be a seven-seater, but Moore did stress that a new Grand Vitara was by no means confirmed at this stage.

There is some momentum behind the push for a new GV, however, with Australia joined by international markets also calling for a new model.

"New Zealand's very keen, elements of Europe that see potential for it, and also some Latin American markets as well," was how Moore characterised that international groundswell.

"I'm quietly confident that we'll see a new Grand Vitara, and it will stay true to what the current Grand Vitara is."

Moore suggested that once the new model is confirmed, development of a new Grand Vitara would require three more years to bring to market.

"Generally a new model will take four years in development, but I would suggest [development of] this car they could probably accelerate..."

That is all contingent on the development programme centred around the Vitara, rather than starting afresh with a clean sheet of paper and staying with a full-chassis construction for the new model.

Although Moore didn't suggest for a moment that Suzuki would ditch full-chassis construction for any new model under development, he was openly dubious that the factory would persist with the existing model's chassis and build a new body on it. He pointed to the fact the existing Grand Vitara's chassis is already 10 years old, and building a new top hat for it would extend the chassis's life cycle by a further six years.

According to Moore, the Grand Vitara in its current form was a respectable seller in its segment right up until around 2013, when six new models arrived in the local market – including Mazda CX-5 and Honda CR-V.

"We were getting momentum with Grand Vitara, but then we were competing with a six-year old car [against] all these brand new models. Since then it has been tough, but we have increased [sales] volume this year on last year, with a few tweaks."

The Grand Vitara had consistently sold above 3000 units per year between 2007 and 2013, but last year sales slipped by over a thousand units to 2160. For the year to date the Grand Vitara is sitting above 1600, which should keep it above 2000 units by the end of 2015 – with four months remaining.

"One of our challenges with existing customers is they want a new model to move into," Moore observed. The Suzuki Australia exec is confident Grand Vitara customers could be convinced to buy a monocoque model based on the Vitara, but a cheap front-wheel drive version will possibly lack the ultimate towing capacity of the current (rear-wheel drive) Grand Vitara Urban.

And for those who are hard-core off-road enthusiasts, they have the choice of stepping down to the Jimny or trading in a used Grand Vitara for a new one that's basically the same. As Moore pointed out, the current model is not going away just yet.

"We've still got Grand Vitara; we're going to keep selling it for the foreseeable future. It's in my budget plans for the next 18 months..."