BY JARED GALL
Suzuki's Grand Vitara is not a vehicle seen often on the pages of Car and Driver. As a small trucklet, it competes in a segment that doesn't incite brawls during our Monday morning car sign-out sessions. If we have to drive a small SUV, though, we're more likely to choose a Toyota RAV4 or a Honda CR-V than the Suzuki.
Like all Suzukis, the Grand Vitara plays a little dirty, using price to undercut the competition. You can pick one up for right around $20,000. With that parameter in place, the class shrinks considerably to just a few vehicles: the Dodge Nitro, the Ford Escape, the Hyundai Tucson, the Jeep Compass and Patriot, the Kia Sportage and Sorento, and the Saturn Vue. Jeep's Wrangler slips under that price point, too, but people who are going to buy Wranglers just buy them and don't think of anything else. If they did, they wouldn't buy a Wrangler.
So, for 20 grand, what do you get? A rear-wheel-drive Grand Vitara with a 185-hp, 2.7-liter V-6 (the only engine offered), a five-speed manual transmission, and seating for five. That's right: rear-wheel drive. Whereas most of the competitors listed above are front-drive-based crossovers on platforms adapted from small cars, the Grand Vitara clings to the old-fashioned rear-drive small-truck roots established by its forebears, the Suzuki Samurai and Sidekick. Four-wheel-drive versions even get a low range for serious rock-picking, but with just 7.9 inches of ground clearance—less than that of any of the rock hoppers such as the Nissan Xterra or Jeep Grand Cherokee we drove on Mendel Pass in the April 2006 issue—user discretion is advised.
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