Suzuki narrows focus on small and light products

Suzuki's latest mid-size sedan, the Ciaz (pictured), has been effectively ruled out for Australia, says the importer's general manager, Andrew Moore.

Speaking with motoring.com.au for the local launch of the new Vitara last week, Moore revealed that the Ciaz had been engineered down to a price that would suit emerging markets. But that cost-effective engineering package – some might call it 'cheap' – would leave it out of contention in the local market, and perhaps even incapable of meeting ADR homologation requirements.

"They're basically building it for developing countries that have a totally different standard of safety," Moore explained. "It's almost like they've got to build it again from the ground up to meet our requirements. That's why it's not available in this market."

The medium passenger market is probably not a segment in which Suzuki wants to be playing anyway, although it has sold 97 Kizashis so far this year. With just four months of the year remaining (in VFACTS terms) only Toyota has been able to sell more than 10,000 units of a mid-size car – the Camry, on 14,645 for the year to date. In fact, no other medium car has sold more than the Mazda6's tally of 3665 in 2015 so far.

Suzuki Australia, according to Moore, is content with a future of selling small and light cars and SUVs in respectable numbers.

"The key thing is Suzuki is a small-car expert, and I know that I'm not going to get a full range, so I want to dominate that space as much as possible. And I've said to my dealer network in the past we've talked about our market share; I now talk about being number one in that space... private sales.

"In every location that's how we measure how our dealers are... number one in [the] local area."

Currently the importer is selling Celerio, Swift, S-Cross, Jimny and now the Vitara. It's also selling the Grand Vitara medium SUV that is the only model in the Suzuki range to measure as long as 4.5 metres.

And it's not stopping there either, with plans to bring in the new Baleno, based on the IK2 concept car, and the IM4 – a sort of Suzuki-style downsized Kia Soul.

By being slightly shorter but more upright than the Swift, the crossover SUV – as Suzuki describes it –has a niche virtually sewn up in Australia, according to Moore. Quite simply, it's the sort of car that Volkswagen buyers might have cross-shopped against the German brand's Taigun, except VW has decided against bringing the Taigun to Australia because it's too short.

"We'll have this car as a crossover, we'll have Jimny in the line-up as your real small SUV – off-road – and then you've got Vitara as your true SUV, and then S-Cross as your crossover hatch-type vehicle. So there's a lot of vehicles in that compact space.

It's potentially a confusing array of models, all separated by barely half a metre of length and bracketed by no more than about $20,000 from the cheapest to the most expensive. Moore admits that, but he's not perturbed by it.

"If you look in the global markets where Suzuki is strong... it's in markets where most cars are small. We're a little bit unique in Australia, where people drive light cars, small cars, larger SUVs, large cars. Go to the US, everyone drives big cars, but we actually have the full range.

"For Suzuki, their success has been in small cars.

 "For Australia, the strategy I'm looking at is I want to be the leader in the compact passenger, compact SUV space."

All of this hinges on the IM4 and Baleno reaching Australia. Suzuki Australia wants both cars, but they're not locked in just yet.

Baleno will inject some diversity into the local Suzuki range, Moore says, for buyers who can step up to larger boot capacity than the Swift's without being lost to a different brand. 

"For us to grow our volume, we do need a wider model line-up, even though there are perhaps less differences than say Mazda2, Mazda3, Mazda6.

Moore believes that Suzuki Australia can reach 30,000 units a year, with the new Vitara on board, plus the Baleno and IM4 to come. That's considerably more than the roughly 17,000 units Suzuki sold in Australia last year.

Moore doesn't admit to being disappointed that some brands that have entered the market much more recently than Suzuki are selling more cars.

"If you've got a full model line-up, there's obviously more opportunities to capture more segments."

But one or two of those brands are understood to be wooing fleet operators and selling their cars at heavily discounted prices, relying on sales volume to turn a profit. It wouldn't work for Suzuki, Moore says, with so much of the product portfolio priced below $30,000.

"We just can't compete at that large fleet level, so I'm not going to sell cars at a loss."