The current-generation Suzuki Jimny just had its best ever month of Australian customer deliveries in August, having been on sale here for the best part of four years.
It delivered 672 Jimnys to customers last month, taking the annual total to 3630 units – up 70 per cent. It was Suzuki’s top-selling vehicle in August by some margin.
Despite the improved supply meaning more Jimnys are going into customer hands, Suzuki says demand is only growing with time – despite the fact it doesn’t even bother to advertise the one-of-a-kind baby 4×4.
That means those wait lists will remain a factor.
“The order-write is so huge that even if we continue with those kind of numbers, we still wouldn’t be able to clear our back orders well into this next year,” Suzuki Australia general manager Michael Pachota told us this week.
“… We are getting increases in enquiry and definitely increases in conversion as well,” he added, saying that each sold Jimny was effectively a rolling billboard that drove new buyers into dealers.
“You can imagine the awareness it’s creating because of its point of difference in traffic… Customers looking at that car going, ‘I don’t know that car, I want that car, let’s go see that car and buy that car’,” he said.
“That seems to be the case, where people are seeing them on the streets, based on the origin of where we understand they first found out about the Suzuki Jimmy.”
Mr Pachota said he always expected the Jimnny would be a hit here, but said its rollout had been held back by tight supply from Japan – something the company has been trying to rectify.
Wait times have been out beyond 12 months, depending on grade and colour, with the company changing its back-end processeses in May last year to try to ease wait times.
In the meantime, they’re going for a pretty penny in the classifieds. The recommended retail price tops out at $31,490 before on-road costs of a few grand, yet there are currently 117 going for above $40,000 on Carsales.
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