One case: Suzuki vs. Consumers Union.
Wherever you stand on that infamous case, whether you think that the Suzuki actually represented a roll-over risk on evasive maneuvers due to its short wheelbase, narrow track, and high center of gravity, or Consumer Reports was out looking for blood and decided they were going to make the Samurai roll, the results were still the same. That blow pretty much guaranteed the demise of the Samurai in America. But it has been 28 years since that unfortunate incident. Not only are foreign version of those Samurais perfectly legal to import and register in the United States again, but a lot of things have happened with Suzuki’s little off-roaders since then. One of them is that the new Suzuki Jimny.
Well, I say new; it has actually been quite a while since the new Jimny was introduced to the public. It was originally launched in 1998, which means it’s of legal drinking age on most states of the union by now. But when you have a car like this it’s not really necessary to give it constant updates. There’s not even a lot to update in it.
I love it; here’s a car that’s all things to everyone. People who never venture out of the city will appreciate the fact that it’s easy to park, “cute”, and remains stylish and left-field in a world of cookie-cutter crossovers. Not to mention that style and cuteness comes at a low price. And those who actually use their off-road abilities will appreciate the fact that it’s still a body-on-frame car on a ladder chassis and it comes with low-range and vacuum-locking hubs. Independent suspension? What’s that? The Jimny comes with solid axles front and rear.
It’s perfectly capable of keeping going even when mother nature throws deep mud or snow on its path. And those solid axles make it easier to upgrade when even its stock capabilities are not enough to satisfy your trailing desires. For much of the rest of the world, the Jimny is the Jeep Wrangler, in 7/8 scale.
Okay, it’s not all sunshine and cuteness; there are some downsides to it. The interior, for instance, is neither comfy enough to be luxurious nor spartan enough to be hose-down. And with an 85 horsepower 1.4-liter engine as your only engine option you’ll probably want to skip the freeway between your town and the trail of your choice. Because it’s built like cars of yore it also means that it’ll be a bit bouncy on normal roads and not nearly as sparing with the dead dino juice as its tiny body and meager power output would make you believe. It’s also equipped like a car of yore.
But I’m the kind of person that would forgive those niggles to get a cheap, simple, small, reliable and fun car. What about you? Is it too much compromise for little reward? Or does it hit that perfect sweet-spot of old and new?
I would buy a Jimny just as soon as I would have bought a Plymouth (Mitsubishi) Cricket back in the early 1970’s.
Plymouth Cricket was a Hillman Avenger built in the UK, but I get what you’re saying.
Actually I’d rather have a Hillman Avenger than the Suzuki.
Nuthin wrong with Avengers, good little cars and still many on the roads here including the rarer wagons.
I sit corrected. I believe I got the Cricket confused with the Dodge Colt of the early 70’s which was a re-badged Mitsubishi. In any case the Jimny and the Cricket would look right at home in a Disney movie. 🙂
I’m afraid I’ve never owned or driven a Suzuki Jimny (Suzuki Samurai), but I’ve known people who have, and they loved driving it. I think Consumer Reports (Consumers Union) is full of shit when they say that the Samurai is a dangerous vehicle to drive. I suppose if it’s driven in such a way, it can be dangerous. But if you’re careful how you drive the vehicle, you should be fine. It’s the suicidal drivers, or the homicidal drivers you have to be careful around.
CR is full of shit on a lot of things. But their vendetta against the Samurai was one of the worst.
http://www.aim.org/aim-report/aim-report-a-black-eye-for-consumer-reports/
Bottom line, the Samurai was not nearly as dangerous as they claimed, and in fact passed their standard tests with one tester giving it their highest rating for stability.
On the other hand, there’s this, which confirms the obvious: that the Samurai was inevitably more prone to roll-overs than most other vehicles, and that Suzuki was quite aware of that:
Suzuki internal documents indicate that the company was aware of the Samurai’s rollover problem. A Suzuki memorandum dated July 14, 1985 stated: “It is imperative that we develop a crisis plan that will primarily deal with the ‘roll’ factor. Because of the narrow wheelbase, similar to the Jeep, the car is bound to turn over.”[8] Over the years, over 200 Suzuki Samurai rollover lawsuits have been settled and Suzuki’s own expert witnesses testified the automaker was aware of 213 deaths and 8,200 injuries involving Suzuki Samurai rollovers. (Wikipedia)
There is no doubt that the Samurai was tippy. The reason CR went after it was because one of their staffers was involved in an unintentional rollover driving a Samurai.
And Suzuki didn’t win its lawsuit against CU. They settled out of court, with both side agreeing to disagree.
CU’s biggest mistake appears to have been the wording of their results: easily rolls over in turns which really was poorly worded and misleading. And it was specifically those words that Suzuki fought over.
There’s no way Suzuki could have proved that the Samurai wasn’t intrinsically more prone to rolling. It really was.
In no was this comparable to the Audi-60 Minutes framing or other similar faked/manipulated reports like the Chevy pickup exploding gas tanks. CU had experienced an inadvertent rollover on the streets, and rightfully set out to determine just how tippy the Samurai was. They never manipulated anything; only their choice of words in their write-up was perhaps misleading.
Should it be obvious that a vehicle like the Samurai was tippy? Of course; but that’s what CR does: confirm what an intelligent informed consumer should already know.
The real issue here is how Americans responded, in their usual exaggerated way: Oh; this is a death trap. Must not buy. Instead of evaluating the product intelligently with the information available, and using accordingly.
Yes it is more susceptible to rollovers than most cars. So is my minivan. So was my Explorer and my 4Runner and F150.
The problem is that CR subjected the Samurai to testing that they did not subject any other vehicle to. They then used that testing to declare it “Not Acceptable” when the fact is that they had no clue what other vehicles would or would not meet the same criteria because they never tested them. They then went on to claim that it “easily” rolled, which was clearly not the case. I don’t see how anybody could justify that as good journalism.
The problem is that most people are ignorant and lack common sense. I have a cousin who owned both a Corvette and a CJ-5…the latter of which was lifted and had a 304. His driving habits didn’t change from one vehicle to another. How he managed to not roll the Jeep is beyond me (Ive owned 3 CJs and lost count of how many Ive test driven) but predictably, he went thru those AMC model 20 rearends like I go thru cold beers at a BBQ.
FWIW, Im not exactly a granny driver and never came close to rolling my 360 powered CJ-7. I did roll my ’81 Laredo, but that took a patch of black ice and a steep 7 foot embankment.
What it boils down to is this: I don’t care if its a Samurai, CJ, VW bus or whatever else you got, if you don’t know to adjust your driving habits for a purpose built vehicle then please…PLEASE take the bus.
Don’t ask me how he did it but my dad in 1942 in the Marine Corp rolled a jeep going up a 35 percent grade at Camp Pendleton. The court martial inquiry absolved him. Seems like even in those days the Jeep was known to have problems.
My grandfather was in the French army, which got a fair share of Jeep Willys, which were later built under license by Hotchkiss.
He always told me that they were known as death traps because of easy roll-over.
No surprise here. Narrow tracks, short wheelbase lightweight body don’t match well when you try to corner it too fast.
Never mind the Jeep, how about the M 151 Mutt with the independent suspension? In the IDF they were eventually relegated to off-road work only with specially trained drivers after to many rollovers.
Something to bear in mind about the Consumer Reports rollover report: it came out in 1988, three years after the Samurai had first gone on sale in the US, and seven years before the model was withdrawn from sale in that market.
While I think we’re all in agreement that it shouldn’t take a genius to figure out that vehicles of this type don’t handle like sports cars, it’s worth pointing out that the model remained in the market, largely-unchanged, for a decade – and two-thirds of that decade was after Consumer Reports’ article.
Realistically, if Suzuki and / or the Samurai-buying public had been concerned enough by the rollover report to sink the Samurai’s chances in the market, it would have been pulled from sale no later than 1989. But the reality is that there was a definite niche for vehicles like this, that niche realised and accepted that you can’t expect a capable 4×4 to handle like a passenger car, and drove their own Samurais accordingly.
That is was finally discontinued for 1995 can be put down to the proliferation of larger SUVs in the marketplace, including the Vitara / Sidekick / Tracker as (mostly) in-house competition. But Consumer Reports’ biased testing ultimately did little to hasten the Samurai’s demise in North America.
“A party whose mission is to live entirely upon the discovery of grievances are apt to manufacture the element upon which they subsist.” – Robert Gascoyne Cecil, 1882
Kinda reminds me of the vendetta that CBS’ 60 Minutes had against Ford with the whole combustible Pinto thing in the 70’s (And the article even cited every other Ford including my 73 LTD – a very safe and very LARGE car.)
I recall the Suzuki Samurai thing and thinking at the time there was like a million of those things on the road, yet per capita, probably a very small number that actually ended up on their roofs.
That said, even if it was over-inflated hype to sell magazines, it probably had one positive effect in the public mind-set: SUV(s) and other high center of gravity vehicles can roll over, and you should drive carefully.
I think that the local Nissan Rogue drivers around here must have missed that memo. Not to say that all Rogue drivers are “Rogue Drivers”, but whenever I see one of those things in rush hour, it’s usually looks like it’s being driven by someone auditioning to be the wheel-man in a chase scene in a remake of the 1984 film ‘Against All Odds’…. (Spoiler Alert: There are MANY Curbside Classics in the clip below… see if you can spot ’em all! – Enjoy!)
What does a Nissan Rogue have in it anyway that people think it’s a Ferrari 308 or Porsche 911? A turbocharged hi-po V6 or something?
Again, no offense to those of you Rogue owners out there who drive normally… :o)
We had an ’86 Samurai, and its reputation as being tippy was no joke. I got ours on two wheels making a 90 degree turn from one street to another at 25 MPH. Ours had wide low profile tires on it so I can only imagine how easy it would have been to roll one with the standard tall skinny tires. Other than that, it was great. It was terrific off road and terrible on road but it was a lot of fun.
People seem to love their Jeep Wranglers and of the remaining Samurai’s on our roads, they are either in usually OK condition and serve as in town transportation or they are seriously hopped up for off-road duty. The Jimny wouldn’t be any worse in either regard.
I’m not sure what you were referring to in the beginning where you said that foreign market Samurai’s are OK to register here in the US again – there was never any ban on Samurai’s, Suzuki just stopped selling them. If you want to import your own it needs to be at least 25yrs old, nothing newer.
I think the rollover thing was overdone, plenty of cars can roll over, some are just a little more susceptible to it than others. A tall, short wheelbase trucklet with a narrow track can roll over easily? What a shocker. Maybe if this country got serious about actual driver’s “education” instead of letting your gym coach teach you in high school there would be a little more common sense out there. Heck, the Corvette supposedly has a high incidence of rollovers in real accidents compared to other cars, once again, it’s often more to do with the driver and what they are doing than the vehicle itself. If you tried hard enough, no doubt you could roll a Camry or an old Volvo wagon too.
The biggest problem regarding buying a Jimny over here is that Suzuki no longer sells ANY new cars here, having pulled out a few years ago. I’m not sure about Canada though and can you get a Jimny in Mexico?
85HP? No thanks. I looked up some reviews and it looks pretty interesting otherwise. 39MPG in a real off road machine is nice but 14+ second 0-60 times not so much.
85 HP sounds like muscle car territory when you compare it to the 60 HP that our 1986 Suzuki Samurai put out. You had to be very patient when driving it and passing on 2 lane highways was suicidal behavior.
We owned 3 Grand Vitaras. We bought the first one, used with a stick, and only traded-up to get more towing capacity, which it did beautifully. I also selected a loaded (leather, moonroof, automatic) Grand Vitara as a company car. All superb vehicles with no maintenance issues. The marketing, however, sucked. One dealer said ” I have one in the back, come back in a week to drive it.” I lnew it was all over when they made Crazy Freddy a dealer and came back a short time later to pick the vehicles up!
As a collector of Honda ATCs I believe I would be somehow obligated to buy a new Jimny.
Both vehicles got a bad rap, Consumers Union for the Sammy and Baba Wawa/60 Minutes for the ATC.
Consumer reports reviews are mostly based on the assumption that people do not know how to drive and are scared of cars.
I have seen 2 Samurai’s on their side in I-5. Both were steel roof versions. Does that make it a bad vehicle? No, just out of it’s element on US interstates. I too, am a fan of Honda ATC’s, owned 2 of them. Hate quads, one too many wheels for me. Will they spit you off? Sure. So will a motorcycle. Or a bicycle. Or a personal watercraft.Tired of perfectly good products getting the shaft by clueless morons. CR isn’t even worthy of the birdcage.
Most likely not. There is something about it that I do like, however.
What I’d really like to see is the return of a more car-like Jeep Wrangler – a new C101 Jeepster Commando, if you will.
That certainly would be pretty simple for FCA to design & build.
They could do a soft-top Renegade, but who would buy it? Those who can’t afford a Range Rover Evoque convertible?
It’s pretty cool, I would buy it for the region I live in, which is coastal, and low-traffic. Seattle commuting? That’s another story
Where do you live that an 18 year old car has reached drinking age? I’m twenty and here in the States I’m still not allowed.
Legal drinking age went from 20 to 18 in New Zealand several years ago, and yes, it was hotly debated at the time and still provokes fierce debate whenever (yet another) 18 year old gets plastered and runs amok.
I do believe legal drinking age also varies by state.
It’s 21 in every state. Back in the mid ’80s the usual suspects (MADD/LDS/SBC) got the feds to tie the drinking age to federal highway funds, much the same as the old 55 NMSL.
I owned two Samurais (long story that involved a 6-point speeding ticket in an ’82 Cavalier, a motorcycle and a sleeper ’66 Pontiac Tempest) and drove both “vigorously,” including taking turns at speed. While the tires would squeal, it never felt like it was going to roll. “Driving a slow car fast” definitely applied here. We unfortunately decided to trade on a “new baby friendly” Chevy Spectrum right in the middle of the CR hullabaloo, and took a hefty loss. Really wish I had kept it, and would definitely take a look at a modern version.
Not likely, since its basically a Wrangler larvae. But put the Jimny up against pretty much ANY fwd car based CUV, Id pick the ‘Zuk every time.
Had a friend who had a Samurai. Very basic. Jiggled and hopped over any road surface. Scary the way she drove that curvy section through Beverly Hills on the way to PCH. I was glad to get out of it.
The Jimny: that B pillar has to go. The rest of it I like a lot. And the minimal console is a selling point for me.
I was recently at a huge “Motor Sports” shop looking at jet skis. They had a fleet of ATV’s, some of them are very large and look almost like street legal vehicles. Some of the Jimney’s pictured here look like little more than an ATV.
When Suzuki cars were still sold in the United States, it was apparent that there were better choices for similar or little more money. It would not appear that anything has really changed, so I’d have to take pass on this otherwise fun looking vehicle.
That’s what I was about to say: UTVs (ATVs with car-style seating for 2-6 people plus a cargo bed) seem to tick all the same boxes as a Jimny would, with the added benefit of not costing as much up front. Of course, they’re not road-legal, but those I’ve ridden in seem to be just as composed on gravel as a Jimny.
Stil for sale at UK dealers. NIce brochure but I have not seen a new one for 6 years…
Englands rarest new car?.
Also here in Austria, and they are bought by those in the know for their off-road capabilities particularly in the mountainous areas of the country.
CC effect: I followed a brand new one yesterday on the way to work. We get it in two spec levels, the NZ$19,990 1.3 JX (which lists a glove box as a feature) and the NZ$22,990 1.3 Sierra (which has a/c, p/w, p/m, p/l). Both come with ABS, dual front airbags and ESP with traction control, which should reduce the rate-of-rollover (TM). They’re popular here with New Zealand Rail, as the axles are narrow enough that they can propel themselves on rails without needing any extra connection between the drive wheels and the dolly wheels. Their go-anywhere reputation is strong; if I owned a farm I’d certainly consider buying one (although an old Land-Rover would probably be my first choice).
There’s one nearby that I see very often. I like small nippy cars, and they look kind of fun. But I have so many better things that I could do with $20,000
Like Scott I could buy one if I so desired however I have absolutely no use for a Jimny so NO.
My little sister had a Samurai as her daily driver in the early 90’s. Had the MN vanity plate “TIPPY”. I bent up and welded on rocker panels when the originals rusted out. She ran it low on oil and it developed a rod knock. I sold it to a co-worker who planned to keep it in N Dakota as a prairie dog hunting vehicle.
Looks like the perfect 1980 era car. If I could buy one for a perfect 1980 price I certainly would. I would probably like to have one of these even more than my 4 Runner since it probably does considerable on fuel.
I might have bought this instead of the 4Runner had the opportunity presented. However, Toyota durability was a pretty strong call.
Suzuki has also cleared out of Canada.
I think a lot of this goes back to DON’T overdrive the situation. a couple years ago I bought my first 4wd, a jeep grand Cherokee. right on the visor was a note warning that this vehicle was more prone to tipping over.
when I first started driving it did feel more unstable in corners than I was used to and I was cautious.now, 55,000km later, it ain’t no Porsche but I will zip around corners at a good clip without worrying about ending up like a turtle!
I have a friend who just rolled his rental Jimny on iceland.
It was due to driver error though, as he was driving to fast on an unplowed road and hit a snowdrift during a snowstorm.
The Jimny might the only one of the two cars I’d like to buy new.
The other one being the Lada Niva, still sold here in France.
I’d like to see a Lada review, because I have never seen one.
I am half-Russian, just so you know…
Absolutely would.
I’m glad you posted something like this. I’ve been having the toughest time finding a dual purpose vehicle for my family. This thing would be perfect with a bit more punch under the hood and an upgraded center console. I have a small homestead in the sticks outside of Chicago. A lot of the local roads/trails we use to get to our property are not cleared in the winter time so moderate to good 4wd with adequate ground clearance are a must. Eliminating most if not all CUVs. The vehicle making a very long trip into the city 6 days a week makes good mileage a prerequisite as well. This eliminates most SUVs and pickups with actual ground clearance. This would be easy if I was single. I’d pick up a used Tracker or something and be done with it. With the requirements of my female counterpart this becomes increasingly difficult because the vehicle has to be new-ish (less than 5 years) and contain a moderate amount of technology – and if I haven’t said this yet we homestead aka we’re poor. So that eliminates everything else. Apologies about the rant. Again, cool read.
A Jeep Renegade might meet some of those criteria, although that’s not based on any firsthand experience.
Just to clear something, the Samurai and the current Jimny are not the same, the Jimny is smaller.
And of course, there is no reason not to buy either, of course it would be easier to roll over one of these than a car, but you have to know that and drive accordingly (and maybe fit a rollbar?).
Tough little boxes. Very common as private snow plows here in Munich.
Auch in Wien…