Death of the ultimate 4x4 The Suzuki Samurai

[Music] [Music] [Music] hello everybody and welcome back to performance on wheels yesterday we reviewed a Fiat 500 Abarth and surprisingly we found something smaller we did it is actually shorter than a Fiat 500 and it is narrower than a Fiat 500 both by about 4 inches and the Fiat 500 is one of these smallest cars on the roads in the u.s. today let's go ahead and take a peek at the 1988 Suzuki Samurai BAM when the Suzuki Samurai came out it was shipped from Japan and they only started with about 1600 units and they started doing it on the coast they didn't think it was gonna be a big deal and all of a sudden that caught on like wildfire there yeah so the samurai was released in California it was released in beach towns and Suzuki didn't think it would be popular it's just more of a test it's been sold and still is sold in different parts of the world to today called the jim knee so jim knee in other parts of the world right now back then jim knee and in other parts of the world the samurai was the u.s. model not only that but when this did come out in the US this was the best-selling convertible in america dan and it was a lot of fun it caught on like crazy people actually absolutely loved the samurai it was over 200,000 units sold I believe yeah and it was crazy the thing is and the death of the samurai started occurring in 1988 the samurai actually has a pretty neat history behind it there's a pretty cool court case in lawsuit surrounding the history and most likely the death of the samurai in America around 1988 when Consumer Reports was doing a review on it a news article on it one of the editors actually rolled the samurai and he rolled it multiple times on the freeway from their consumer reports started looking into the samurai closer and what they found after intentionally trying to roll it over their findings or the way they released the story was the samurai was easily rolled over making it an instant death trap to drive on America's roads and americo did respond sales plummeted of the Suzuki Samurai and by 1995 the samurai was completely done they couldn't hold on anymore and Suzuki then opened a lawsuit on consumer reports the story goes and the finale was it's no one really won in the end but they both agreed that Consumer Reports agreed that Suzuki does try to make good cars or does make good cars and tries to improve the safety of their cars on a regular basis and Suzuki says about consumer reports that they are a good organization that does well and they do proper testing so almost a decade of litigations and trial led nowhere this year a Suzuki Samurai was the operator for one who could not afford the Wrangler you can see right here down here this is four-wheel drive this thing was a beast off-road not only that but it was extremely reliable for the price compared to the competitors that's one of the reasons that did so well there are no options to really go over on this vehicle I do have massive notes listing out every little thing that changed but it wasn't exciting enough to go over basically all you need to know is it came in a hardtop it came in a convertible the convertible did way better the hardtop died off and a new engine was released it was May through the same engine three more horsepower a little bit more torque and it was just fuel-injected no automatic transmission was ever available for the samurai it only came in this year 5-speed manual [Music] forty holy cow stop you don't want to get up to the speed limit we obviously didn't have ease of access figured out back in 1988 with having to unclip the reel on your tailgate to even get into our very roomy trunk the new Suzuki Jimny is not nearly as a success as this samurai was it's kind of a joke in the car world actually there's a lot of videos out there of like trying to see how many chimneys it takes to pull a g63 AMG so if you want a piece of American history it's getting harder and harder to find nice examples of the samurai however there are many people that think this is a collector even today a nice example goes for auction and there's proven to sell at auction for more than that $8,100 starting price recently one sold on bring a trailer for ninety one hundred dollars I have seen a few examples on eBay top 12 13 grand this is a fun little no thrills four-wheel drive vehicle it's funny to think that back in 1988 there was a street-legal four-wheel drive vehicle that was produced in the United States that cannot even reach the speed limit however you can go buy a side-by-side in today's world that is not street-legal in a lot of places but yet is bigger and faster and more reliable than the suzuki samurai was another reason the samurai is wildly popular is because how easy it was to work on I mean look at this thing it's open as can be you can tear this thing apart and put it back together in your garage in a day so it was very easy to do engine swaps lift kits bigger tires there's a lot of modifications you can do to this thing in a very easy and timely manner compared to some of the competitors truly the ultimate utility vehicle this one we customized back in the day for a receiver spot there along with the one up front here where we drilled right into the bumper and made another receiver where we made a mount for our canoe we told 16-foot boat this we hauled canoes around it's the ultimate little yard beast as well getting in and out of the samurai is absolutely easy at 6 feet tall we do have adjustability forward and back in our seats as well as some reclining as the options in here are really endless we have a turn signal we have windshield wipers we have we had a horn and check out the custom cup holders no couple there standard in the samurai you had to come up with your own creation do a review on this little feller honestly I hope we're both in the frame right now because personally I don't know I don't know if there's much of a difference if you're in a set of mile a person in your own seat we're in here we are in here we just test drove a Fiat 500 Abarth which is one of these smallest vehicles on the road today and this makes it feel big yeah that thing was a level compared to this right yeah this is nuts you want to know what's even crazier what a Polaris RZR 1000 turbo is about four inches wider than this I believe it and then it goes on dirt trails I believe it all right Todd send it the 0-60 time of about 17 and a half seconds [Music] beast 3 2 1 go [Music] really put you back huh this is a good friend of Mines he's been a good friend of his for over 20 years and him and his family have always had samurais his dad had the nicest one it was fuel-injected to go almost 70 miles an hour on the highway this one you're gonna need some downhill and some drafting tailgating love to get up to 70 once that's like mama her go to 1995 but yeah you could never see that you'd have to throw it off a cliff and it'd have to be a big enough cliff that it could get up to 90 well it's got to be on there so yeah this is just a little too barrel carburetor on top of a 1.3 but anyways he used to have one that had the coolest license plate it was called the bug pump I like that yeah it fit it perfectly it was the little mud pump just splashing through little puddles we took this samurai that we're in right now on a 10 hour road trip it's with a 16 foot boat behind us talk about dumb and dumber that was the longest fall there was ten hours in a normal car I think it took us about 13 but yeah it was an experience just absolute road noise if you wanted to get any sort of speed or if you wanted to stay at speed you know like 60 65 you'd have to literally be within feet of behind the semi-trailer I bet they like that no they don't they just change lanes all the time because they they see you cut behind them and then they change lanes right away so every once in a while you'd find a driver that either didn't care or wasn't paying attention and we could get a few miles going 70 on our long journey but yeah we we went from Minneapolis to southern Missouri didn't skip a beat we got there and back without issue we played around found a few trails down there we might be the only true people I've never taken a road trip in Mississippi samurai I bet you're the only two people that I've ever done it with the 16-foot boat behind us very possible remember in the mud pup the the samurai that was prior to the blue one we're in today boy we used to have some old boy holy crap moments in that thing going down twisty gravel roads that way faster than any vehicle should be going exhaust no muffler wide-open throttle going back in doubt a lot of good memories in the samurai a lot of good memories back end though it was 66 horses 60 always have to make sure you're up to the speed limit and get her down low on idle that no muffler and straight through exhaust to get another 1 or 2 horsepower out of that 1.3 now to do what you gotta do don't leave me harassment from the law on this high horsepower unit part of loving cars is you kind of love the stories behind all of them it doesn't matter if it's a hundred thousand dollar supercar or at eight thousand dollar just over 2,000 pounds of zukie Samurai you can appreciate how all cars could bring a smile to your face and you can make some memories in them guys thanks for watching this brief video on the suzuki samurai today looking back at a true American icon like subscribe thank you guys so much for tuning in glad that you guys joined us yeah just like Todd said like and subscribe hope to see you guys in the future videos if you guys are interested in the car we just purchased go ahead and click here our Jaguar appetite if you want to see us review wait so we own a Camry one of the most reliable cars on the road go ahead and click right here and if you guys would like to see us too that Toyota Camry making it somehow extremely fast here and subscribe right here have a nice day that's Pleasant 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Channel: Performance On Wheels

Views: 35,668

Keywords: off-road, ohv, best 4x4, samurai, Suzuki, keep, Wrangler, Jeep Wrangler, classic 4x4, Land cruiser, 4wd, lifted samurai, 1985 Suzuki Samurai, 1986 Suzuki Samurai, 1987 Suzuki Samurai, 1988 Suzuki Samurai, 1989 Suzuki Samurai, 1990 Suzuki Samurai, 1991 Suzuki Samurai, side by side, classic off roader, consumer reports, four wheel drive, four wheeler, samurai review, suzuki, trail, collector 4x4, collector, convertible Jeep, convertible 4x4

Id: XeUK5F5fvpY

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 27 2020