Suzuki has piqued inter­est ever since the unveil­ing of the Kiza­shi con­cept back in 2007. After all, it’s not often we see a large car con­cept from the car­maker, known for it’s rally and motor­bike her­itage and a his­tory of com­pact (and very com­pe­tent) small cars.

The new Kiza­shi fol­lows some of the flow­ing lines we were shown with the Kiza­shi 2 con­cept, while clearly show­ing a refine­ment from the con­cept to an almost pro­duc­tion appear­ance. Gone are the daz­zling paint jobs, 4WD ride height, crossover sports wagon styling, and head­lights. Instead ver­sion 3 of the Kiza­shi rides on 21 inch, 9 spoke chrome wheels, sports a new, sharper head­light design, wider split grille, a more mus­cu­lar front end, and 350z style rear haunches becom­ing almost a 4 door sports car.

Along with the stun­ning styl­is­tic update come some juicy details. The new Kiza­shi will carry a 300HP ver­sion of the GM’s new DOHC 24-​​valve 3.6L V6, come with Suzuki’s advanced i-​​AWD sys­tem mated to a paddle-​​shifted 6 speed auto­matic trans­mis­sion and will com­fort­ably seat 5 persons.

It’s one of the most solid close-​​to-​​production con­cepts we’ve seen and Suzuki claims we will see pro­duc­tion of the Kiza­shi in some form in 2010, with con­struc­tion planned to be at Suzuki’s new Sagara plant in Japan. Here’s to see­ing Suzuki build this, and since we’re wish­ing, we might as well throw in a wish for the X-​​HEAD too.

Kiza­shi 3 Concept:

The Kiza­shi appeared at Frank­furt not long ago, and hot on it’s heels comes the Kiza­shi 2, which looks to be either a crossover or soft roader.

�Kiza­shi 2.0

The car appar­ently drops the 2.0L 4cyl TDi expected in the Kiza­shi 1.0. Instead Kiza­shi 2.0 gets a 3.6L GM V6 and 6 speed auto­matic, and may or may not be a hybrid vehi­cle. It’s unknown at this point wether the Kiza­shi 2.0 would sport the AWD sys­tem slated for the Kiza­shi 1.0 concept.

It’s also unknown why the two dis­parate vehi­cle con­cepts hold the same name in the first place. It may sim­ply be a ‘style name’ rather than actual vehi­cle name.

[Source:� Car­a­disiac]