The Chicago Auto Show Media Days - or should I say media day or maybe half day - are underway with virtually nothing major expected. The big Chicago news is the weather with a high of 63 degrees today, breaking the Feb. 10th record going back to 1876! Fitting that Chicago is experiencing almost equator-like temps when American Suzuki, which introduced their Equator pickup truck a year ago in Chicago, will reveal all the awards this vehicle has won like 4-Wheel & Off-Road's "4X4 of the Year".
The 2009 Equator, a re-badged Nissan Frontier, offers a standard 152 horsepower 2.5-liter DOHC inline four-cylinder engine or an available 261 horsepower 4.0-liter, V6 DOHC engine which start as low as $17,995 (including the $775 destination and handling charges).
American Suzuki has brought back Koichi Suzuki, as executive vice president of the Automotive Operations unit of American Suzuki Motor Corporation who spent 5 years at Suzuki's Southern California headquarters during its haydays before heading back to Japan in April 2007. He was most recently group leader, North America marketing group at Suzuki Motor Corporation. Suzuki, like every auto executive, will be looking to make the business more efficient and cost-conscious. Mr. Suzuki, no relation to the brand he works for, will also assume the duties of Gary Akin, vice president of sales at American Suzuki, who "has left the company" after coming over from VW in March 2007.
Suzuki is a big force internationally with sales of 2.6 million cars in 2008 according to Gene Brown, Vice President of Marketing who says India and Japan are among Suzuki's biggest markets. American Suzuki sold about 85,000 vehicles in the U.S. last year. January sales were nearly cut in half from January 2008, somewhat surprising for a company that has fuel-efficient, inexpensive, made-in-Japan vehicles.
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