They say there’s a grain of truth in every joke and that may well turn out to be the case with Suzuki’s long-wished for Jimny bakkie.
On April 1 this year Suzuki Auto South Africa posted a rendering of a Jimny with a load bed on its social media platforms as an apparent April Fool’s Day gag.
Suzuki Australia’s general manager Michael Pachota has confirmed that a Jimny ute could certainly see the light of day.
“Anything that starts with Jimmy ends in sales,” Pachota told Australian media, as reported by CarSales.
“The project, I would say, is not dead,” he said when quizzed about the possibility of a pick-up.
“Imagine a Jimny with two seats at the front and nothing at the back?”
Rumours of a Jimny bakkie have been swirling ever since the current-generation SUV surfaced in 2018, and the carmaker even went as far as showing a concept version at that year’s Tokyo Auto Salon.
However, that vehicle would not have made practical sense as it was based on the three-door Jimny and as a result had a very small cargo area.
However, the recently introduced five-door Suzuki Jimny with its 340mm-longer wheelbase, appears to make a lot more sense as a basis for the Jimny bakkie as the April 1 ‘joke’ rendering illustrates all too well.
Although it will never fill the shoes of other small bakkies like the recently departed Nissan NP200, due to the Jimny’s expensive 4x4 hardware, a Jimny bakkie would certainly fill an interesting niche.
And like the Aussie exec stated, the Jimny badge basically prints money.
Hybrid and EV Jimnys on the cards
Apart from the long-rumoured pick-up, the Jimny family is also set to expand to include ‘new energy’ variants.
Suzuki has already indicated that a fully-electric version of the Jimny will debut by 2030 as one of five new battery powered vehicles that will be aimed at the European market.
CarSales says a hybrid version of the Jimny is also an inevitable addition to the coming years, likely arriving with the model’s first facelift, although there’s no word on specific powertrain details at this stage.
A hybrid is something Suzuki is likely working on with urgency though, given that the currently 1.5-litre petrol engine no longer meets emissions standards in some markets.
IOL Motoring