Suzuki Twin

The Twin started as a show car, the Pu-3 Commuter of the 33rd Tokyo Motor Show in October 1999, and it kept the concept’s basic design.source 1source 2 A near-production car came to the Tokyo show of October 2002, and on 22 January 2003 Suzuki announced it and put it on sale across Japan as an economical, practical two-seat kei car.source 3source 1source 2 Its name was the English word, for its two power sources, petrol and electric, and its two seats.source 1 English Wikipedia calls it Japan’s answer to the Smart Fortwo’s City-Coupé, and a little longer than the Smart.source 3

Suzuki made much of how little road it needed. At 2,735 mm its body was, the company said, the smallest of any Japanese kei car, and its 3.6 m (11 ft 10 in) turning radius the smallest of any Japanese four-wheeler, as tight as a cab-over kei truck’s.source 1source 2 The windscreen was set well forward for an airy cabin, with the instruments in the middle of a low, flat dashboard. The boot took one ordinary suitcase; fold the passenger seat forward and there was a flat floor long enough for something like a golf bag, and a lidded box under the boot floor.source 2 There was no tailgate. Only the rear glass opened, which let Suzuki fit a very stiff rear cross-member and bumper.source 1source 2 Underneath, it shared mechanical parts with the Suzuki Alto.source 1

A hybrid on motorcycle batteries

Its claim to history is the hybrid. Suzuki’s release called it the first hybrid system on a kei car sold to the public, and it was the first production kei car to have one.source 3source 1source 2 Suzuki developed it in-house: a thin electric motor of 5 kW sat between the 658 cc three-cylinder and the four-speed automatic gearbox, and the engine stopped by itself at rest.source 1source 2 The battery was the surprise: sixteen maintenance-free 12 V lead-acid batteries of a motorcycle type, in two blocks of eight, for 192 V.source 1 On the Japanese 10·15-mode test the Hybrid A returned 34 km/l and the cheapest petrol car 26 km/l, and every version met the ultra-low-emission and 2010 fuel-economy standards that earned a tax cut.source 1source 2

The prices told against it. Before tax, the Gasoline A, with a five-speed manual and neither air-conditioning nor power steering, cost ¥490,000; the Gasoline B, with a three-speed automatic, ¥840,000. The Hybrid A, built to order from March 2003, cost ¥1,290,000, and the Hybrid B ¥1,390,000. All four had ABS.source 1source 2 English Wikipedia notes one economy of the cheapest cars: a single power window, on the driver’s side.source 3 Suzuki hoped to sell 200 a month.source 2

Small changes, then the end

In June 2003 Suzuki added the Gasoline V, an automatic with air-conditioning, power steering and power windows, and offered air-conditioning and power steering on the Gasoline A.source 1 Car and Driver drove a Twin that August and was mostly unimpressed: it found fault with the acceleration, the storage and the interior trim, and liked the headroom and the turning circle.source 3 The Series 2 of January 2004 brought more equipment, a colour called Cat’s Eye Blue and an entry price of ¥550,000, and the hybrid at last got a type approval of its own, having been registered until then as a modified petrol car.source 1

Neither version sold well. Japanese Wikipedia’s verdict is that the hybrid was too dear for the car’s size and performance, and that the cheap petrol car did little better.source 1 The hybrid was dropped in February 2005, production ended at the end of August, and the last cars were sold from stock that December, 10,106 Twins in all; English Wikipedia’s “until October 2005” is probably a slip.source 1source 3 Five years later, on 17 March 2010, Suzuki recalled every Twin built to replace the exhaust pipe, whose reinforcement could crack and break.source 1

No survivor count, owners’ club or auction record has been found. The 2010 recall covered every car built, and the photographs on this page show Twins on Japanese streets, one of them in the livery of the CoCo Ichibanya curry-house chain’s delivery service.source 1