Auto For Speed

Miami isn’t exactly a driver’s town. It’s a tangle of perfectly perpendicular secondary streets demarcated by lengthy stoplights and the occasional drawbridge or toll booth. Perched on the very tip of Florida, it’s one of the last places we would voluntarily spend time behind the wheel, but despite the bumper-to-bumper traffic, hair-raising lane changes and lawless nature of the traffic patterns, high-end metal is the norm down here.

We’re fighting for our right to merge against a Bentley Continental GT, Ferrari F430 and a murdered-out Nissan GT-R as we make our way toward South Beach, contemplating the implications of dinging a car worth more than our mortgage when it dawns on us: The high rollers around us should make way – we’re driving one of the most unique cars in the country.

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In Japanese, “kizashi” means “something good is coming.” For Suzuki’s sake, its all-new 2010 Suzuki Kizashi – which took a long time to finally get here — had better be good if the Japanese automaker thinks it is going to make a dent in the cutthroat midsize sedan segment.

Despite being the 11th-largest automaker in the world and one of the few companies that has remained profitable worldwide during these hard times, Suzuki remains a fringe player in the U.S., with American consumers more readily associating the name with its popular motorcycles. The niche status doesn’t have Suzuki discouraged, though. (more…)