REPORT: Volkswagen considering stake in Suzuki for micro-car alliance
Suzuki Alto Lapin - Click above for high-res gallery
According to reports from Reuters and Manager Magazin in Germany, Volkswagen is keen to purchase a 10% stake in Suzuki in order to cooperate on future small cars for emerging markets. In its home market of Japan, Suzuki is the second-largest automaker behind Toyota and dominates the tiny Kei car market alongside Toyota-owned Daihatsu.
These miniature 660cc vehicles are extremely popular in Japan's dense urban settings and Volkswagen reportedly believes this class of automobile holds great promise for emerging markets. In India, for example, Tata Motors has seen a great deal of success with its diminutive Nano, which is billed as the cheapest car in the world.
Suzuki already enjoys a measure of success in Tata's home turf, where its Maruti Suzuki subsidiary offers the Alto, which has been the best-selling automobile in India since 2004. At this time, both Suzuki and Volkswagen are declining comment, but VW chairman Ferdinand Piech has praised the Japanese automaker numerous times in the past.
Gallery: Suzuki Alto Lapin
[Source: Retuers]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
nicomista 2:08PM (6/25/2009)
Maybe VW should be upset that this name is very similar to a Rabbit
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Mayoman 2:17PM (6/25/2009)
or the fact that it looks almost exactly like a 2nd gen cube
Bloke 3:12PM (6/25/2009)
Or maybe that it looks like any previous incarnation of the Alto with a nose which resembles the (much larger) Nissan Cube.
James 7:43PM (6/25/2009)
Or that this car has been out for ages before the 2nd gen cube hit the drawing board, and the Nissan Cube is probably about twice the size of this car.
Jei 2:08PM (6/25/2009)
If I were Suzuki, I'd sign an agreement yesterday. VW knows how to keep their brands separate and allow their engineers & teams to design focused products.
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DiRF 2:23PM (6/25/2009)
"In its home market of Japan, Suzuki is the second-largest automaker behind Toyota and dominates the tiny Kei car market alongside Toyota-owned Daihatsu."
This is what irks me about the Insight and Prius battling each other in recent months to be the "best-selling" car in Japan... those rankings always exclude kei-cars, which now make up around half of all new-car sales in Japan... if taking into account kei-car sales, the best-selling car in Japan, year-after-year since 2003, has been the Suzuki WagonR.
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Taglane 2:30PM (6/25/2009)
That has to be the biggest Nissan Cube ripoff ever.
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DiRF 2:33PM (6/25/2009)
To be perfectly honest, both the 2nd-gen Cube and Lapin were released at the same time (2002)... it's hard to determine which is a ripoff of which, or just a mere coincidence. The 1st-gen Cube looked nothing like this.
P.V. 2:34PM (6/25/2009)
Actually (and I direct this to Mayoman as well), the Alto Lapin and Cube came out in the exact same year; that said, the Lapin's inspiration comes from much older Suzuki kei cars, so the Lapin isn't exactly a rip off of the Cube.
Taglane 2:37PM (6/25/2009)
Oh..... moving on lol
Mayoman 2:49PM (6/25/2009)
hmm. you learn something everyday.
Bloke 3:15PM (6/25/2009)
Mayoman - don't you just.
If you go back at prior generations of the Alto, you'll see the same kei-car profile. Whatsmore, it's far smaller than the Cube.
P.V. 2:31PM (6/25/2009)
That would be great as Suzuki might get some more money to be able to bring the micro-cars over. In India, Maruti-Suzuki (Suzuki has essentially a complete (100%) stake in Indian manufacturer Maruti Udyog) has a lot of city car and subcompact models (I'll put the equivalent JDM Suzuki models in parentheses): with the 800 (oldest Alto), Alto (somewhat more recent but still old Alto), A-Star (newest Alto), Ritz (new Splash/Opel Agila), Swift (newest Swift), DZire (sedan version of newest Swift), and Zen Estilo (older MR Wagon), Maruti-Suzuki has that market covered and utterly dominates in sales in those segments. VW could do well with a stake in Suzuki.
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P.V. 2:31PM (6/25/2009)
Oops. They also have the SX4 (duh).
Kitko 3:09PM (6/25/2009)
Lapin also goes as Mazda Spiano
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BigWill 3:30PM (6/25/2009)
VW is only wants to do this because Marchionne is considering swallowing up Suzuki in his march toward world domination.
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Stephane Dumas 4:24PM (6/25/2009)
I guess BigWill might be right, Autoblog once mentionned this rumor in May http://www.autoblog.com/2009/05/11/rumormill-suzuki-to-join-marchionnes-fiat-chrysler-opel-super/
On the other hand, Carlos Ghosn didn't played his card yet, maybe he pass and check elsewhere or....
André 3:55PM (6/25/2009)
1990s - 2000s: GM creates Saturn, buys Saab and Hummer, buys 20% of Fiat and 10% of Subaru, closes Oldsmobile and Pontiac, badge-engineers almost all products to all brands, except the majority of Cadillac portfolio, invests a lot of money in pickup trucks and SUVs, is outsold by Toyota, goes bankrupt, sells 75% of Opel to Magna/Sberbank, sells Hummer to Sichuan and Saab to Koenigsegg. By these times tried and tried to hide the true financial situation
1990s-2000s and maybe 2010s: VW buys SEAT, Skoda, Bugatti, Lamborghini and Scania, wants to buy 10% of Suzuki, invests a lot of money in an unsuccessful luxury car for its main brand, invests in SUVs and now in pickup trucks, wants to outsell Toyota, tries to have every kind of car to everyone in the main brand and in a smaller way in the other ones, except the majority of Audi's portfolio. Some rumors by these times said that VW could be bought by Ford and Audi could spinoff. Porsche tried to merger with, but it didn't happen by now.
The future we can't know because it ain't happened yet, but can I see a parallel between the two auto groups and foresee some kind of dark times to VW soon?
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BluePariah 4:40PM (6/25/2009)
Apple meet Orange.
There’s a few critical differences here.
First, take yourself out of the US mindset. VW is a much more global-minded company than GM and as we have said roughly 5 billion times here, the US is not even close to VW’s biggest market. (with that said, VW is doing very well here by only being down ~12% compared to 30-40’s) With that in mind, consider the following:
The entry-level brands that VW bought (SEAT, Skoda) are home market brands so there’s not a lot of market cannibalization like we saw at GM (G3 anyone?)
VW didn’t dump a ton of money into the Phaeton. Most the parts were shared with either the Bentley GT (platform) or the A8 (engines). It was probably still a mistake to build, but not a soul crushing one.
VW has for a number of years had pick ups (Caddy and CrossFox) in the South American and other markets. This is a not a new investment for them and they sell well in their intended markets. While the Tiggy has been a disappointment in the States, in Europe they are selling faster than they can make them.
The investment in Suzuki is a good idea because it will give them some needed experience in the microcar segment. Granted it’ll be a long time before we see it popular in the states (if ever) but in India, China, Africa, South America, these will likely sell very well. VW has a long standing brand presence there but they need some innovation (Mexico just stopped selling the original beetle a few years ago).
And, of course, they are attempting to adapt to what the market needs instead of GM’s until-very-recent stubborn instance on trucks and SUV’s.
I think VW will do just fine.
Andrew 7:02PM (6/25/2009)
Wow, you really don't know much about VW.
VW is a well run, profitable and global company - unlike the former GM. Those Germans sure know how to run their industries!