Last week Suzuki released a teaser for their Super Bowl ad which they've called "Sled." Today they've released the entire ad. It still has dogs, but now it has 50 Cent. I didn't know he was still around.
One Super Bowl mystery commercial down, a few dozen to go. This is Suzuki's 2012 Super Bowl Ad titled "Sled."
In it we've got sled dogs, Eskimos and the 2012 Suzuki Kizashi Sport. The Kizashi Sport was also the star of Suzuki's previous -- and first -- Super Bowl spot "Wicked Weather."
Think this one has what it takes to get people's attention? There are dogs. Everyone loves dogs.
$7 to race a Ford SVT Raptor in Forza 4? Deal. Though I'm going to be seriously disappointed when they don't modify the game physics to just let me run amok through the infield.
In addition to the Raptor, you also get that nifty little Suzuki pictured above. The one made famous by Monster Tajima when he smashed the 10-minute barrier on Pikes Peak on the final year there would be any dirt.
These two are the only reasons I have any interest in this content, but the full list of cars and a video of the new cars is posted after the jump.
Building booths for auto shows costs a ridiculous amount of money, so we're not exactly surprised by this week's announcement that Suzuki is bowing out of the 2011 L.A. and 2012 Detroit auto shows.
Suzuki's U.S. sales are actually up 20 percent in 2011 (20,284 vehicles sold in the first 9 months vs. 16,972 in the first three quarters of 2010), but the automaker has minimal presence in either the Southern California or Detroit market. And going to great expense decorating a couple auto show stands with plush carpeting, friendly models and a few customized Kizashis probably wouldn't have changed that reality.
Most of us know how enjoyable it can be to row our own gears, and there are some cars whose manual transmissions turn this exercise into a brilliant high point of the driving experience.
Suzuki agreed in June to buy diesel engines from Italy. Sounds like a nice plan except the company has a partnership agreement with Volkswagen, which also has 20-percent stake in the Japanese company. When VW served notice of an infringement of the cooperation agreement, a company spokeswoman said "We will have to see now how Suzuki reacts." Well, they just got their answer.
Suzuki Chairman Osamu Suzuki announced that his board of directors officially dissolved "the comprehensive partnership and the cross-shareholding relationship with Volkswagen AG." (Full announcement here)
"I thought they understood that being a partnership of equals was important, but it gradually changed," Suzuki said. "If it keep going in this direction, it will become a ball and chain for Suzuki's management."
Last we saw them, the kids from GoPro were sitting in the media van heading down Pikes Peak with a baseball cap literally full of GoPros. At 14,000-feet, there are few better ways to store precious media than a baseball cap. Pikes peak is that kind of event. And understandably it took some time to process all of that footage, plus the footage from the helicopter.
So now, slightly more than a month from the date Tajima smashed the 10-minute barrier, we've got the final cut of the record-breaking run. Note how much less terrified he looks than Rhys Millen does in the PM580 and how much less he appears to be battered around by the vehicle.
Suzuki has been coming up lame at recent Auto Shows. Sure, they had a couple of cool, tweaked Kizashi in New York,(one full of dealer-option performance stuff) but beyond that it's been the same Suzukis. The Geneva show changed that path with the Swift S and at the Frankfurt Motor Show, Suzuki will be showing off the Swift Sport.
The "sport" part of the name, however, seems ambitious.
Here we've got a 1.6-liter, naturally-aspirated Suzuki-built motor producing only 134-horsepower -- up from 123 -- but returning lower fuel consumption than the original one. The transmission is a six-speed manual which results in "performance that is both exciting and environmentally responsible." The suspension is tuned more aggressively as well. Suzuki did not provide the weight of the new Swift Sport.
First things first: Yes, I paid money for that hat. When you're at the top of Pikes Peak with temperatures in the mid 40s and wind in the high 40s, you'll wear pretty much everything. (Pictured: hat, three shirts, jacket. Not pictured: Giant wool socks.)
Next, as you can plainly tell, I was at the 89th annual Pikes Peak International Hill Climb this past weekend. You can see a gallery of the events here, and if you want to know more about it, well, read on....
By now we all know that Monster Tajima secured a victory at the 2011 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb with a record-breaking 9:51 run in his Suzuki SX4 Hill Climb Special. And while we were there (and happen to be in the screen grab above) we only saw the last corner. That's the trouble with seeing racing in person, you only get a quick glimpse of the action.
Now, thanks to Gopro, we have roof-mounted video of what running up Pikes Peak in under 10 minutes is actually like. And if you liked this video, keep your eyes peeled for more; GoPro had more than a dozen cameras -- literally one baseball cap full-- mounted to the camera and the track to be cut, edited and shared. This is a one-shot deal, an appetizer.
Nobuhiro "Monster" Tajima, who turns 61 later this month, set a new record at the 2011 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in his Suzuki SX4 Hill Climb Special with a time of 9:51.28. This time beat the old record, which he set in 2007, by 10 seconds. And he managed to do it without power steering or a water pump for the last few corners.
The multi-pump failure had Monster, visually, going slower than expected through the cool and extremely windy top corners, but still, there was enough time on the front end of the course to give Monster the win, and the record.
Rhys Millen and his Hyundai Genesis PM580 suffered, too, at the Peak with a brake failure four miles from the top. "I lost my brakes and had to go into the corner at speed. I'm still not sure how I made it." Rhys said after the run. Impressively, Rhys used the transmission in lieu of the brakes and finished with a heroic 10:09.30. Again, Millen's team had problems with transmission this year, breaking fourth gear the night before the race.
We're three days away from the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb where it's more likely than ever that someone -- either Monster Tajima, Rhys Millen or Dallenbach -- will smash the 10 minute mark. And that's why HRE, wheel sponsor for Millen and Tajima, has put together this video of the top drivers talking about the race-- and the record.
Refinement. Automotively speaking, it can manifest itself in a host of ways -- the way a knob moves as you turn it, the look of a cabin, the way a car glides down the road.
In the past, refinement was something that came with a steep cost. These days, we can thank an increasingly competitive marketplace for making this most lofty attribute available in vehicles with decidedly down-to-earth price tags.
It can be a real delight to reside in a part of the country that experiences changing seasons. You've got those leaves going from green to rust in the fall. And in winter, there's that blanket of snow, white as a christening gown.
Of course, the down side is that these types of seasonal changes come with certain practical inconveniences. Driving in inches and inches of snow isn't exactly a picnic, but if you live in this kind of environment, you know this -- and you also know that all-wheel drive can help make the slog easier.
Audi achieved its highest U.S. sales ever in 2010 (101,629 units) and it expects to break this record in 2011. Its success is well-deserved. This is a brand that's been turning out top-quality products for years; good-looking vehicles whose interiors are often class-leading, offered at prices that make them excellent value propositions.
Still, Audi has a long way to go before it catches up with Lexus, Mercedes-Benz and BMW, the sales leaders in the luxury segment. Each of these brands sold over 220,000 units in 2010, a figure that more than doubles Audi's sales. These numbers suggest that appealing as its vehicles are, Audi continues to be overlooked by shoppers on the hunt for luxury transportation.
This situation got me thinking about other worthy models that are frequently overlooked.
Automakers are using racing apps to reach out to gaming consumers, and Suzuki's entry is the free Kizashi Ring of Fire app for iPhone and iPad. It's also available to play online and on Suzuki's Facebook page, in which case an iPhone or iPad can be used as a remote control for the game via a technology developed by Brass Monkey. We tested the app using an iPad.
The game is based on a real-life Tokyo-to-LA promotional road trip that Kizashi took and features "fantasy" tracks along the way in Tokyo, Siberia, Alaska and Los Angeles. On the Tokyo and Sibera tracks players race a Kizashi SE, while on the Alaska and LA tracks they're in the Kizashi Sport GTS.
But we found that the game doesn't live up to what we've come to expect performance- and feature-wise from our well-liked long-term Kizashi.
Proving slightly more resilient than the New York Jets (or my Patriots-- seriously, Brady, get a haircut next year), Suzuki is going to the Super Bowl for the first time this year!
The Super Bowl Ad features the Suzuki Kizashi showing off its AWD system by evading some evil snowball-throwing snowmen. (Which really is kind of terrifying. It's like being chased by zombies who are throwing hunks of their own flesh while you scramble to safety.) The ad will air in Suzuki's 14 largest markets: Chicago, Pittsburgh, Mobile-Pensacola, Ala., Raleigh-Durham, N.C., Nashville, Tenn., Burlington, Vt., Charleston, W.Va., Harrisburg, Pa., Johnstown, Pa., Bluefield-Beckley, W.Va., Roanoke, Va., Rochester, N.Y., Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Charleston, S.C.
If you're not lucky enough to live in one of those fine areas, just watch the spot above.
The redesigned Suzuki Swift hatchback spotted on the Nurburgring earlier this year will make its official debut at the 2010 Paris auto show, Automotive News reported today.
American Suzuki officials have been talking about re-launching the Swift, which has become one of the better B-segment hatchbacks in Europe, in the United States for the last couple years. No launch date has ever been specified. However, in today's AN report, Suzuki's Steve Younan, the U.S. head of product development, noted that the U.S. launch date has been pushed back until sometime in 2011. European sales will start this fall.
The problem with the U.S. market is a lack of available marketing dollars to launch the happy new hatchback.
As the Japanese yen has risen against the U.S. dollar, Suzuki has opted to slash its U.S. marketing budget rather than raise prices -- which is one reason why a very good car like the Kizashi is practically invisible to the American buying public.
Video of a sport-trim Swift lapping the 'Ring after the jump.
