CarBrandLogos archive · Suzuki · 1962

SuzukiFronte

Suzuki's first family of kei cars, and the ancestor of everything small it built after.

Photo: TTTNIS · CC0

The story

A defining chapter in Suzuki history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Suzuki Fronte, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

Suzuki had been making two-stroke kei cars since the Suzulight of the 1950s, and the Fronte name, first used in 1962, became the umbrella for its small passenger cars for the next quarter century. Successive generations moved from two cylinders to a three-cylinder two-stroke, and from front-engined layouts to a rear-engined arrangement in the late 1960s that freed up space inside the tiny footprint the kei rules allowed.

1970 Suzuki Fronte SSS rear · TTTNIS · CC0

Design and engineering

The most striking of them was the Fronte Coupe of 1971, a low two-door with styling input from Giorgetto Giugiaro, unusually exotic company for a car built to a Japanese tax class. Suzuki also used the Fronte for publicity, including a widely reported high-speed run on Italian motorways to demonstrate what a 360 cc car could sustain.

1972 Suzuki Fronte GL-W · TTTNIS · Public domain

In production

Production ran until 1989, by which time the name had been overtaken by the Alto, which was effectively the same car sold under a badge Suzuki could use worldwide.

1969 Suzuki Fronte Super Deluxe LC10 · TTTNIS · CC0

At a glance