While Suzuki itself is a 105-year-old company, founded in March 1920 as a manufacturer of textile looms, 2025 marks 70 years since the launch of its very first automobile.
Launched in the northern hemisphere autumn of 1955, it was called the Suzulight and set the tone for the kinds of vehicles the Japanese brand would specialise in – small cars.
Due to a decline in the cotton industry in the early 1950s, Suzuki looked to diversify its business, turning to motorised transport with the arrival of its first motorcycle two years before the Suzulight in 1953.
While it took until the mid-’50s to materialise, development had started as early as 1937 when the company’s founder Michio Suzuki began researching vehicles produced overseas. Further development of this idea was prevented by the second World War, before the Suzuki Motor Company was finally established in 1954 to resume development.
The Suzulight was developed to easily fit within Japanese ‘Keijidosha’ or Kei light car legislation. Shorter than three-metres long and weighing just over 500kg, it featured a 360cc two-cylinder, two-stroke engine producing a humble 11kW.
However, it was still an advanced design, becoming the first Japanese car to use a front-engine, front-wheel drive layout. It also boasted independent coil spring suspension and rack and pinion steering.
During the prototype stage, its most memorable early drive was a 300km trip across the mountainous Hakone region between Hamamatsu and Tokyo – a journey which proved to be very challenging on roads that were still unpaved. Although arriving very late in the evening, the team arrived to present the car to the president of Japan’s leading automobile authority, ‘Yanase Auto’.
The president of Yanase Auto had stayed on late to greet the Suzuki team and thoroughly test the car himself. Several hours later, he returned very impressed and gave Suzuki approval to put the Suzulight into production on the spot.
Suzulight production commenced in October 1955, with only three-to-four cars a month built at first. By early 1956, monthly volume had climbed to 30 units. Today, Suzuki produces over three million cars each year, with a projection of four million units annually by 2030.
Michio Suzuki personally delivered the very first Suzulight to a local doctor who had previously been conducting his house calls on a bicycle. As of figures published in August 2023, over 80 million automobiles bearing the Suzuki name have been delivered to customers since.
