Currently reading: Icon of icons: Autocar Awards Readers' Champion - Suzuki Jimny

Is the Suzuki Jimny your favourite automotive icon? Read what we think and cast your vote

 

The Suzuki Jimny is in the running to be this year’s Autocar Awards Readers’ Champion. Each day a different member of the Autocar team will champion one of the 17 cars, but only one can be the Icon of Icons and it’s up to you to decide - vote here.

Why is the Jimny the icon of icons? Let’s ask an owner, our head of video and second-generation Jimny log-book holder, Mitch McCabe: 

“Generation upon generation of formidable off-roader. Its timeless, classic, ‘cute’ looks are matched with proper off-road hardware and when people say it will go anywhere, they mean on all continents, due to its accessible price tag. 

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“There have been various designs and special editions over the years, but the lineage that includes LJ10s, SJs, Samurais and Jimnys has been iconic in every form, particularly the new one.” 

Ah yes, the new one. However strong a case Mitch puts forward, would the Jimny be here if Suzuki’s latest fourth-generation model had been a bit ugly, a bit bloated, a bit me-too? 

Yet that Suzuki has got it so right, again, shows just what an icon the car is, and also how regulations can force positive creativity in the industry once in a while. The first Jimny, launched in 1970 and back then called the LJ10, was the first 4x4 built to Japan’s dinky kei-car regulations. It still meets those regs today, meaning the Jimny’s footprint will likely never grow. How often can you say that about a modern car? 

The LJ10 was not only the first 4x4 kei-car, it was also the first model Suzuki had global success with. It looked like a little Jeep, performed like a little Jeep and was as customisable in its body as a Jeep, with hard and soft tops, no tops and pick-ups all part of its range. 

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Suzuki launched the second-generation car, badged SJ30, in 1981. By this time it was known as the ‘Suzuki Jeep’, due to that SJ code (to list all the different badges and acronyms the Jimny has had over the years is like learning another language). 

The SJ of the 1980s was also responsible for the most infamous period in the Jimny’s history, when the Samurai version sold in the US toppled over in Consumer Reports tests. It destroyed the car’s reputation among the wider US public (although not with hardcore 4x4 enthusiasts) and brought with it a court case that would rumble on into the 2000s. Yet the Jimny survived, and has gone on to thrive. 

The third-generation car of 1998 (note how the generations of Jimny actually get longer each time) was the one you’ll probably know best. It stayed on sale for two decades, and near the end of its life was the longest-running model, outlasting the previous Land Rover Defender and Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen

Throughout its time on sale, it offered something few to no other cars can offer: character, and real mechanical simplicity. No other car maker made such a compact, capable 4x4 – something that’s still true today, with the just-launched fourth-generation Jimny. 

The small, lightweight Jimny, with its ladder-frame chassis and lowratio transfer box, allows you to go more places for less money than any other car, and has done for almost 50 years. It cements the Japanese firm’s position as one of the world’s most modern and innovative car makers. And the better the Jimny gets, the more fondly the older ones are remembered, too. That’s why it’s an icon.

Click here to vote for the Suzuki Jimny to be named our 'icon of icons' 

Read more

Delivering a Christmas tree from Scotland to London in a Suzuki Jimny​

Suzuki Jimny vs. Toyota Land Cruiser off-road​

Suzuki Jimny review

Mark Tisshaw

mark-tisshaw-autocar
Title: Editor

Mark is a journalist with more than a decade of top-level experience in the automotive industry. He first joined Autocar in 2009, having previously worked in local newspapers. He has held several roles at Autocar, including news editor, deputy editor, digital editor and his current position of editor, one he has held since 2017.

From this position he oversees all of Autocar’s content across the print magazine, autocar.co.uk website, social media, video, and podcast channels, as well as our recent launch, Autocar Business. Mark regularly interviews the very top global executives in the automotive industry, telling their stories and holding them to account, meeting them at shows and events around the world.

Mark is a Car of the Year juror, a prestigious annual award that Autocar is one of the main sponsors of. He has made media appearances on the likes of the BBC, and contributed to titles including What Car?Move Electric and Pistonheads, and has written a column for The Sun.

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eseaton 12 March 2019

A great vehicle, that until

A great vehicle, that until very recently was ridiculed by the motoring press.

A shame they were so taken in for so long by vacuous 'tech' worship.

xxxx 12 March 2019

A winner

Reason being Suzuki have no need to make one and then import it, the sales figures have been that low in the past as have the 'professional' reviews.  It's kind'a of an anti-Germanic way of doing things and I love it all the more for that.

Besides that it's fit for purpose, fun, realiable and depricates slower than a Porsche.  

SamVimes1972 12 March 2019

I think this is the first

I think this is the first icon I would bother voting for. I see these on farms regularly and farmers use them as a safer alternative to a quad (in fairness anything is a safer alternative to a quad).

Compared to the Porsche, a poor design hiding behind increasingly sophisticated electronics or the Fiat 500, a car no one seems to buy twice the Jimny is a car built for a purpose that achieves what it sets out to do.