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Suzuki’s upcoming competitor in the ferocious mid-size sedan segment, the Kizashi, has been spotted by our spy shooters yet again, this time revealing the car almost entirely. Camouflage that amounts to little more than extensive decal work is all that stands between us and the final Suzuki product, a tallish, yet forward looking car that will need every advantage to bring the fight to entrenched competition from the likes of Honda and Toyota.

A crossover version of the Kizashi, as well as a station wagon variant, is apparently in the works for the newest Suzuki lineup—both previewed by concept versions of the car over the last two years.

The engine range should be headed up by a 3.6-liter V-6 making roughly 300 horsepower and likely available with four-wheel-drive as an option—this is a Suzuki after all. There should also be a 150 horsepower 2.5-liter four that will most likely be responsible for the bulk of model sales. Read the shooter’s comments below.

Suzuki announced today that it will be bringing a turbocharged version of its SX4 Crossover to next week’s SEMA show in Las Vegas, Nevada, a hot little number inventively titled the SX4t Turbo Concept. The concept car may be a little light on originality but it will provide what seems like a highly attainable target for SX4 owners who’ve been bitten by the tuner bug.
 
The SX4t most notably adds a 16G GT3 turbo with a Tial wastegate kit from Road Race Motorsports, which helps to bump the Suzuki’s engine specs from 143 horsepower and 136 pound-feet of torque to 221 and 208 respectively. The concept also gets a new set of springs and a rear sway bar, along with uprated front brakes and pads, and a much more aggressive wheel/tire package. A carbon fiber hood and darkened roof pillars dominate the exterior appearance upgrades, and give the Suzuki a bit of visual drama to match its greatly improved performance.

Read the full SX4t Turbo Concept press release below and stay tuned for many more images of the car after its debut on Tuesday, November 4 in Vegas.

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San Antonio, Texas –

The auto purist inside nearly every enthusiast still pines for the now far-gone days when automakers, conceived of, built, and sold each of their creations – owning both the process and the results from cradle to grave. Of course the results of such one application engineering weren’t always laudable, and the process was (and is where and when it still happens) inherently more wasteful than the modern practice of building multiple vehicles on the same or similar running gear. And yet even today, platform sharing vehicles, especially those between two distinct parent companies, are often dismissed with a “badge engineered” label and cast as being somehow less good than the earlier product with which they share an architecture.

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Suzuki engineers are hard at work testing the production version of the Kizashi sedan, based on the Kizashi 3 concept car; a vehicle that they hope will change the prevailing American opinion of the automaker as an exclusive builder of small, inexpensive cars.

The mule spotted here would appear to be a more conservative approach to the sedan than the last Kizashi concept indicated, a route that Suzuki would be wise to rethink if it expects to make a splash in the cutthroat mid-size market. The car will most likely offer a 300 horsepower 3.6-liter V-6 at the top of the range, with an all-wheel-drive option possible, as well as a more efficient 2.5-liter, 150 horsepower four-cylinder. A crossover variant as well as a wagon is also expected in the Kizashi fold before too long.

Read on below for the photographer’s own words or check out the gallery of Kizashi mule images above.

This tiny little truck is one of the first 4x4 salvos that Suzuki Motors fired into the American market. The tiny progenitor for such popular small SUVs as the Samurai and the Sidekick, the LJ20 had micro power with a go anywhere attitude.

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Suzuki has shown the latest version of its Kizashi concept line, the Kizashi 3, here at the New York Auto Show. The company tells us that this third iteration of the design is the closest to a production version, and is said to be the embodiment of Suzuki’s sports sedan vision for the North American market.

Fans of late night comedy institution Saturday Night Live will certainly recognize the tune to this novel YouTube ad from the “boyband sensation

Last week we brought you Consumer Reports’ Top Picks of 2008. Now, we’re letting you in on the worst 11. Chrysler takes a huge hit from Consumer Reports with four out of the bottom 11 belonging to the struggling automaker.