We all are looking at this advertisement in newspapers & online which Suzuki Pakistan is publishing for past few days. They had a similar advertisement suspense development even before when Suzuki was about to launch Baleno in 1998.
It doesn't need a genius to figure out the caption "Something good is coming". In Japanese Kizashi means "Something great is coming". Which means Suzuki Pakistan is planning to launch Suzuki Kizashi locally.
The launch ceremony is taking place at Pearl Continental Lahore as I write this which is why I don't have the details of price or how Suzuki plans to launch Kizashi in Pakistan however I can give a brief history of Kizashi worldwide.
Kizashi Worldwide
Kizashi was Suzuki's flagship car which was produced between 2009 - 2014 and in 2014 it was discontinued worldwide which means once again Suzuki Pakistan is giving us something which has been discarded by the world.
Kizashi has a 2.4 liter 4 cylinder petrol engine with FWD drive terrain; it was offered in 6 speed manual or a CVT transmission with all the goodies and it was basically targeted for North American market as Suzuki's offered vehicle in Par with Altima; Camry and Accord.
The main reason Kizashi was discontinued is that Suzuki rolled out from North America in 2012. The car offered everything in comparison to the competitors however it still suffered poor sales which resulted this mid size sedan as a failure.
Kizashi faced two major issues because of which 1000s of units were called back when in 2010 the car faced glove box issue which opened in a situation of crash & again in 2014 its units were called back due to a fault in evaporative canister which used to clog resulting in extra pressure in fuel tank which could lead to fuel tank to crack causing higher risk of fire.
Suzuki Worldwide did research on two more variants of Kizashi namely Kizashi Apex which was a supercharged variant of Kizashi and other being Kizashi EcoCharge which was Hybrid variant of Kizashi.
Suzuki in Pakistan
Suzuki's position in Pakistan has always been of a underdog and the only reason for that is the way they entered and stayed in Pakistani market for the longest time. Previously Suzuki Pakistan did try to introduce Vitara in 90s later Grand Vitara which was a 2.7 liter 6 cylinder SUV by Suzuki and they both didn't manage to get the desired appreciation. Now Suzuki is launching Kizashi which is a direct competitor of Accord & Camry. Let's say Suzuki Pakistan puts a price tag on Kizashi which is half of its competitors but it'll still come close to 5 million rupees. Now in my humble opinion anyone with a sane mind would prefer to go for Audi A3 sedan or Mercedes CLA in that price range. I agree Kizashi is a car bigger than A3 or CLA but we live in a country where Alloy Rims are considered more important than ABS brakes which means Kizashi cannot offer the "Shashkas" offered by A3 & CLA; but I won't bet my money on the failure of Kizashi in Pakistan because in this country anything can and does happen however in my humble opinion; the odds of Kizashi failing here like rest of the world are higher.
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