- Wolverine, M80 Fireworks.
They're all small, mighty and outlawed in the United States
just like today's car.
This 4*4 packed a big punch in a tiny package.
Today we're gonna look at where it came from
and why one of the cutest cars to ever come out of Japan
is actually perfect for devouring terrain.
(engine roaring)
We're also gonna talk about the fraudulent crash report
inside job that killed it in North America.
This is everything you need to know
to get up to speed on a Suzuki Samurai.
(upbeat music)
Thanks again to our friends at Omaze
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Up to speed.
Chapter one, A New Hope.
Our story starts with the Hope Motor Company.
No, not the used car dealer in Arkansas.
Hope Auto is not the same as Hope Motor.
Today, I'm talking about the Japanese automaker
that got it started in the 50s
with three wheeled Kei cars.
That's right, Kei cars,
not to be confused with K cars, okay.
Now these Kei cars are an ultra mini class
that became popular in Japanese cities.
One, they're easy to park and maneuver
and two, their owners would be exempt from certain taxes
as long as their engine and body
met specific size requirements.
AKA, both of them got to be really small.
Now Hope Motor Company did okay with the Kei
and in the mid 60s,
Hope barged into their workshop with an idea.
"Yo dudes, I have an idea, but nevermind, it's stupid."
"Oh, come on, tell us, no ideas are stupid, tell us."
"Nah, no, you guys are just gonna laugh at me"
"No, dude, come on, blue sky only baby,
"no judgment, let's hear it."
"I don't know, what if we,
"what if we added like a fourth wheel?"
"Dude, you are twisted, but I love it."
So they slapped on a fourth wheel
and released the Hope Star ON360.
Look at this little thing, it looks like
Power wheels truck for grownups.
It also kind of drove like one,
considering it had a blistering top speed of 43 miles/hour.
It used the two-stroke air-cooled Mitsubishi engine,
which made 20 horsepower.
But what it lacked in power baby,
it made up for with surprising 4*4 capability, baby.
For Hope this was really more of a concept car.
They only made 15 of them,
but between that and their three wheelers,
a lot of people were hopeful about the company.
In 1968, Suzuki bought the Hope Motor Company
because the light bodies and engines
fell right in line with what Suzuki was all about,
being small, but innovative.
They saw potential in the Hope Star and re-bodied,
even swapped out the Mitsubishi engine
for a Suzuki FB two cylinder, which up to horse pers
from 20 to an absolutely massive 25.
And in 1970, Suzuki released their new version
of the Hope Star, now called the Jimny.
What, what's a Jimny like a cricket?
A Jimny is the same as a Samurai.
Oh my God, you need to cut this part out,
I do not need any more problems with Samurai.
This was the first global hit for Suzuki.
When the Jimny launched, it was the only 4*4 Kei car
and instantly had a reputation as the perfect froder.
It featured canvas doors
that zipped closed like any proper froder should.
And by 1979 outside of Japan, it came as a soft top,
a hard top and down under,
you could find my adopted kangaroo Nolan 2
behind the wheel of Jimny Stockman.
Oh, you think I adopted a baby baby kangaroo?
No, everybody wants the babies,
Nolan 2 is a full grown middle-aged kangaroo
that was down on his luck.
I actually did adopt a kangaroo, I got receipts.
Now this Stockman featured a pickup tub
that had 42 free Roman Brumbies,
Now four-cylinder, four-stroke motor.
And when the second generation launched in 1981,
and it was more refreshing than an ice cold Shasta.
The styling took a number of cues from Jeep's CJ models
of the day, Suzuki knew who their demographic was.
And just like in the 70s,
there were Kei car and non Kei car models.
So you can find all sorts of configurations.
You hate your windshield, pull it down,
hate the roof, pull it off.
It could go anywhere and do anything.
Meanwhile, we're over here in the States
and people were watching the rest of the world
having all this fun, going to restaurants and stuff
in their cute little 4*4's
and we were like, hello, we'd like to have fun too.
And in 1986, the Jimny came to a stop,
looked us right dead in the eyes finally, and he was like.
- Suzuki Samurai 4*4. - Hi.
- Chapter two, American Samurai Warrior.
The adorable off-road are debuted
in some adorable commercials.
The Jimny was rebadged as the Samurai in the States
to emphasize its lightweight agility
and well, it's Japanese heritage.
It's all about surface level references
for us over here in the U.S.
You can get the American model as a convertible
or a hard top complete with a 1.3 liter four banger
that made an astounding 63 horsepowers,
which was a pretty hefty increase
considering that the first model only made 20.
And the initial plan was to import roughly
14,000 Samurais in the first year.
That sounds terrifying.
But when off-road enthusiasts saw how much dirt
these little things could kick that 14,000
ended up becoming 47,000 by the end of the year.
Hello, yes, I need to upgrade my life insurance.
What made it such a good off-road.
Where do I begin?
(upbeat music)
For starters, it was a true 4*4,
which should really be a given
when you're talking about cars for the trail,
but the Samurai had great low end torque.
When you're trying to go over an obstacle,
it's nice not to have to ramp the red line
just to make it through.
Gearing is also very important
when you're climbing over all of them bouldies.
Samurai had a transfer case which multiplies torque
to make it even more powerful in low gear.
It also had killer angles.
When you're off-roading,
there are three angles you're concerned about,
approach, break-over and departure.
The Samurai nailed all three
because of its high ground clearance and short overhangs.
The Samurai also used a solid axle
rather than independent suspension.
This meant better wheel articulation,
literally keeping the wheels on the ground.
That articulation was also helped
by it's ladder frame chassis.
Ladder frames are a very simple
kind of body on frame chassis
that's existed for pretty much,
as long as there have been cars.
There's probably horse drawn carriages with ladder frames.
Now they're antiquated,
but they can handle a lot of torsion,
which also means more wheel contact
and wheel contact means traction.
(engine roaring)
Are there more capable off-roaders?
Yeah, sure, but rarely is so much of that available
in such a small mass produced package.
In addition to being good for off-roading
it's incredibly affordable,
just like our Buff Horses Sticker Pack
- What's up guys, we've got new LowCar Pins in stock.
- I know we've also got new HiCar Pins back in stock.
These ones are different, they're super limited,
they're finished in a beautiful black nickel finish.
So if you want one, you don't sleep on it.
We're only making 800 of each.
Every single one is gonna be individually numbered.
Make sure you buy it from us,
'cause it'll be cheaper than buying it from eBay
when they're sold out.
- Not only do we have new pins,
but we also have new key chains
for both LowCar and HiCar
they are those remove from flight textile,
so get your hands on those as well.
- These are really cool,
they're gonna sell out soon, just like Nolan did.
(laughing)
Up To Speed.
I mean a Suzuki Samurai at $6,500
only costs 2/3 of a 1987 Jeep Wrangler.
Yeah, it only weigh 2100 pounds
and went 0-60 in almost 17 seconds.
But none of that matters for an off-roader.
In fact, the Samurai outsold the Wrangler 2:1 in 1987.
Then in 1988, Suzuki introduced the 88 1/2 model,
which had softer suspension, better interior,
larger roll bar and a lower fifth gear
to make it better for street driving.
Yeah, sure, they didn't increase the power,
but its lack of speed wasn't what started
slicing up Samurais sales.
Chapter three, Suzuki Motor Corp
versus the Consumer Union of the United States.
In the criminal justice system
that people are represented by two separate
yet equally important groups.
The actual criminal investigators and James Pumphrey,
who makes internet car videos about them years later,
these are the their stories.
This is crazy, all right, I'm just warning you guys.
All right, so in 1988,
a young driver sustained mild injuries
after rolling their Suzuki Samurai
to avoid an object in the road.
Now that wouldn't have been a noteworthy wreck
except the driver happened to be an employee
of the United States Consumer Union,
the same organization that publishes Consumer Reports,
a magazine that reviews products for safety and quality,
mostly old people read it.
Now this accident prompted Consumer Reports
to take a closer look at the tip up tendencies
of the Samurai.
They subjected to the car to sudden swerve tests
at 40 miles per hour, and according to their summary,
Consumer Reports found that the car was easily rolled over.
This prompted Consumer Reports
to give their first unacceptable rating in 10 years.
"This is a car that we consider dangerous."
said David Berliner, the Consumer Unions assistant director.
Berliner means donut in German.
"The design is inherently flawed.
"It's not something where they can make an adjustment
"or put on some hardware in order to make a difference.
"The only solution is to take it off the market."
And just like that sales of the Samurai tanked.
- [Man] That's it, that looked pretty good.
- The report was published at the same time
that the Japanese yen
was rising against the American dollar,
which had already forced Suzuki
to raise Samurai prices by 30%.
And it didn't help that Americans
were primed to believe the Consumer Reports.
There had been numerous findings of SUVs
being involved in a higher number of rollover accident.
It was a perfect storm of bad news,
but Suzuki, they call BS.
You see the Jimny had been around
for almost 20 years at this point,
just not in the US and there had been numerous tests
performed both internally and by federal regulators
that showed it was safe to drive the Jimny.
Something wasn't adding up.
So they put their lawyers on the case.
And after the better part of a decade,
in 1996, Suzuki Motor Corporation
filed a $60 million libel suit against the Consumer Union
for willingly fraudulent testing.
In the course of their investigation,
Suzuki found that consumer reports had manipulated evidence
and changed their testing criteria
with the express purpose of rolling the Samurai.
They uncovered documents
from the first time Consumer Reports tested the Samurai
in which the researcher said,
"The car responds well and corrects quickly,
"leans normally and snaps back in line,
"confidence, fairly high, no real problem."
He even ranked it as one of the best vehicles tested
and gave it the highest safety rating.
And if that wasn't enough, Suzuki got access to a video
from the second round of testing,
in which testers ran the sudden swerve
47 times before getting a single tip over.
In the video, a Consumer Union executive
can be heard saying to the testers,
"If you don't find someone to roll this car, I will."
And it was another executive named R David Pittle,
of course, who finally got the Samurai tip.
And when it tips,
you can hear another tester shout with excitement.
- [Tester] All right, Ricky baby.
- Then they improvised a more difficult test
who employees who were there said
was set up with the express purpose of filming an accident.
And even in that test, it took 15 tries
to get the car to tip.
- [Man] Can't you see it, we get no lift off the ground.
(laughs) oh God.
- A witness said, "From what I heard
"and saw during the testing of the Samurai,
"the objective of the test
"was not to simulate normal avoidance driving,
"but was to flip the Samurai."
Every Samurai I have ever met could flip first time easily.
- Those tests demonstrate that the Suzuki Samurai
has unusually high propensity to roll over
for any driver during routine driving.
- Consumer Reports settled out of court
'cause they got a ton of money
and that's what rich people do.
And they issued a public correction,
but the damage to the brand was already done.
Suzuki's automotive reputation would never fully recover.
And the perception that they made unsafe cars
extended into the Suzuki Sidekick
and even the Geo Tracker.
It just goes to show you
what can happen when one magazine gets too much power.
Chapter four, The Last Samurai.
Suzuki did their best to hold on to the American market,
but when the roll cage mandate came in 1994,
the end was near,
rather than re-engineered the design of the car,
Suzuki simply took out the back seats
to make room for the new roll cage.
And then in 1995, they pull the Samurai
out of the States entirely.
But that's not the end of the story though.
Jimnys are still being produced
and they're crazy popular
anywhere there's a market for Kei style trucks.
Suzuki introduced the third generation in 1997
at the Tokyo Motor Show
with a much more modern design
and a 1.3 liter Suzuki M engine
bringing horsepower up to a blistery 83.
The third gen was sold around the world
under different names.
Maruti sold a version in India
that was perfect for parts of the country
where less capable vehicles were in practical.
Mazda sold a version called the AZ-Offroad
with AZ standing for Autozam,
Mazda's small car off shoot.
In New Zealand, it was sold as the Farm Worker 4*4.
Though there it was strictly intended for work
and isn't legal to drive on streets, it's like a nice gator.
And of course it did well as a Kei car
in its native land of Japan.
It currently holds the record
for the highest altitude driven by a four-wheeled vehicle.
On April 21st, 2007, Gonzalo Bravo and Eduardo Canales
drove a Jimny 21,942 feet up,
Ojos Del Salado in the Andes mountains.
And on the way they pass the sign
left by the previous record holder that read,
"Jeep parking only, others can't make it up here anyway."
They brought the sign back down with them,
which is just a flex.
In 2018, Suzuki released a fourth generation
called the Jimny Sierra.
Like all other Jimny's, it's still a killer off road vehicle
it's currently available in Japan, Indonesia,
Thailand and the Philippines.
But sadly, we probably won't see it here in the state.
So we'll have to make due with trucks
that are way less cute.
Thank you guys for watching this video
and everything else on Donut Media.
Hit that subscribe button and that bell
so you don't miss anything.
We put out a video dang near every day.
You wanna learn some more about little trucks
that aren't meant to go off road,
but are really, really fast
and have more than a blistering 83 horsepower,
check out this episode of Wheelhouse hosted by Nolan Sykes.
Bye.