2010 Suzuki Kizashi SLS Review
It sits at the top of Suzuki's car line which doesn't exactly put it in the clouds, but it is Suzuki's first step to move past quirky on to aspirational. Let's see if you would aspire to a Suzuki Kizashi and check the tech.
Kizashis are all four-door sedans with vaguely Sonata meets Jeddah lines. The finely cast alloys, black pearl paint in unusually mature styling make you wonder if that is really a Suzuki badge. Kizashi means prelude to something good. I hope they are not BS-ing us. Now, our Kizashi is an SLS trim level. That is the top of the stack, which includes a one-choice only, no other upgrades available, Rockford Fosgate head unit. It is a big sounding system and it sounds pretty good. It definitely emphasizes the bass as you would expect from Rockford Fosgate.
Your sources are okay considering what you get for standard equipment. You have AM/FM of course, no HD radio, XM radio capable. We don't have that enabled on this car because for some reason, Suzuki is putting basically a stripped model of the SLS on the press slate tour. Single slot CD right up here, no six-disc changer and no hard drive either, so a little limited on that sort of music inventory and of course USB. This is nice. We have a standard USB jack down here. No aux jack which is interesting so that USB will let you use a thumb drive like I have here or you can plug in your iPod with the wide iPod cable. There is not just bass on this tone control, there is punch bass because that is Rockford Fosgate and it is mid-treble which is nice, balance, fader, and automatic volume control for vehicle speed and there is no surround on this thing, no faux surround or 5.1.
The one other thing we do have though and again, this is a stack on the SLS trim, it's not just Bluetooth for hands-free calling, but also we have Bluetooth audio. That is pretty hot. And all of this comes out of 425 watts of that Rockford Fosgate amplification, up to 10 speakers around the cabin, like I said it ampli-fills this car and generally sounds good and muscular. One other nice thing on this car that it's just totally front-end at the SLS trim level is this push button ignition, key-less entry as well. So that is something a lot of car makers will charge up to $1000.00 for and it is built-in in this $24,000.00 - $25,000.00 trim level.
Kizashis have one rather routine motor, a 2.4-liter inline four, but delivers a 185 horsepower, 170 foot-pounds of torque, but happily through a base 6-speed manual gearbox with some nice throws. A CVT with paddles is optional however and so as all-wheel drive both a la carte. The driving experience is on par with other cars in this class like a Mazda6. MPG is 20/29 and we saw a real world mid-20s, so no fudging there. But if you are really interested in this car as a driver you might want to wait for the pending V6 version. Okay, let us price this Kizashi SLS front-wheel drive. This car has no options, but of course it is high trim and it is 25,100 with destination. Three things you have got to think about if you want to tech it up starting with CVT gearbox with paddle shifters is going to run you 1100, all wheel drive is going to run you 1250 and then the real tech thing is the NAV package which is GPS touchscreen NAV and the rear view camera potentially a steal at 1299 if the NAV unit is any good at all. If it is crummy like some are, and like I am afraid it might be, skip it and get a Garmin.
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