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Suzuki demand in US rises after bankruptcy

Following word that Suzuki is ceasing car sales in America, it appears that demand for the Japanese automaker's wares have increased. According to The Detroit News, American Suzuki Motor Corp. will import an additional 2,500 vehicles to quench demand that has jumped since the company announced that it was filing for bankruptcy and ending sales in America.
Dealers recently informed their sales personnel that no more vehicles would be produced and that this was the final push. With heavy incentives and a seven-year warranty as value-adds, November sales for Suzuki rose in November some 22 percent, up to 2,224 vehicles. December sales also rose, but neither month's gains outweigh the long-term losses for the automaker. While Suzuki will sell roughly 22,000 cars this year in the US, it was selling about 120,000 annually before 2008.
As it stands, Suzuki will sell off the rest of its vehicle inventory, including the 2,500 additional units, and dealers will continue to provide parts an warranty work. With all of this negative news for the automaker, it's impressive to see an interest in Suzuki vehicles even with the imminent shuttering of its North American car sales.

Suzuki testing Grand Vitara replacement that is now forbidden fruit

Suzuki might be dead in the US, but its cars are still thriving in many other markets. Aside from the updated SX4 and a slew of promising concepts at the Tokyo Motor Show, Suzuki is getting ready to launch a much-needed replacement for the aged Grand Vitara, and our spy photographers recently caught the compact SUV testing in Sweden.
Judging by these spy shots, the replacement for the current Grand Vitara - it may or may not retain the Grand Vitara name - will take its styling cues from the Suzuki iV-4 Concept displayed at last year's Frankfurt Motor Show. These cues include the narrow, angular headlights, the sloped D-pillars and we even get a hint of the sculpted rear-wheel arches. We hear that the new Suzuki SUV could go on sale in Europe next year, so we'd expect it to debut later in 2014.

Funning around with ZF's Smart, Advanced Urban Vehicles

ZF has a lot of experience building various electric vehicle parts, including transmissions, but it doesn't put them all together into one cute little package that often. The ZF Advanced Urban Vehicle changes that, and shows what the company can do when it takes bits and pieces of its admittedly cool tech and throws them all into the shell of an old Suzuki Swift. We got to control the all-electric beast at an event in Germany this summer, using nothing but a connected iPad. There were three headline technologies on the AUV (also called the Smart Urban Vehicle): the remote control Smart Parking Assist function, the all-electric rear-axle drive electric Twist Beam (eTB), and the PreVision Cloud Assist. PreVision Cloud Assist ZF had a short track set up for us to try out the PreVision Cloud Assist. The first time around the track, nothing was different. It's not supposed to be. The trick with Cloud Assist is that the car saves real-world driver interactions into its memory and, with the addition of GPS coordinates, starts to learn how to drive the route. Go to work the same way every day? If you're being assisted by a cloud, then all you have to do is steer. The car learns how fast it can take a turn and when it needs to slow down, with the idea here is to let the car move when it can, increasing the efficiency and range of an EV. You're still in charge in case of traffic ahead, but in open road circumstances, you won't need to touch the brakes or the gas. Just the steering wheel. On my second time around the demo track (which had data from other drivers who had tested the car earlier in the day), I kept my feet off the pedals, and the darn thing worked. It slowed me down when necessary to make a curve, but kept me at a brisk pace that felt a bit too fast but was in fact totally appropriate. Electric Twist Beam There's another bit of cool tech hidden near the front wheels. The car uses a MacPherson strut that was modified to offer a wider steering angle, up to 75 degrees, to be exact. ZF calls this the electric Twist Beam (eTB), and it gives the car an incredibly tight turning radius, about 6.5 meters. An axle like this could go into an EV or an ICE vehicle, but it makes a lot of sense in an electric car since it does have a major problem: it can't be powered. No worries, thought ZF engineers, who made the little SUV rear-wheel-drive by adding two electric motors.