Suzuki caps price of popular Ignis for new owners on waiting list
Compact carmaker, Suzuki, is on a roll in Africa. Not only has the company posted record sales during 2017, last week it was also named the Brand of the Year in the cars.co.za awards in partnership with vehicle financier, Wesbank.
In terms of specific models, Suzuki entered cars in only two categories and won both. The very popular Ignis won the Budget Car category while the Vitara was chosen by the judges as the Compact Family Car of the Year.
Suzuki’s Vitara retained its crown, receiving the highest score by the judges and in the customer satisfaction survey. This is the second year that the Vitara was chosen as the Family Car winner, with the judges this year noting that it won with the highest margin of any vehicle in any category.
In the Budget Car category for vehicles of N$175,000 or less, the Ignis won over its sibling, the Celerio, which was last year’s winner. In this category, fuel consumption, affordability and innovative design are ranked most important, and while it got high scores from the judges, its score from owners was significantly higher than all the other scores and that assured it the best Budget Car title.
“The Ignis’s maiden appearance in these awards bodes well for the rest of the year, where it will also compete in the 2018 WesBank South African Car of the Year competition. We have also decided to cap its sales price to accommodate the many people who are on the Ignis waiting list,” said Yukio Sato, Suzuki Auto South Africa’s managing director.
In choosing the Brand of the Year, cars.co.za and market specialists Lightstone Auto polled over 12,000 consumers in a Consumer Satisfaction Survey. Of these, 7,500 were verified.
For the many other categories, judges considered the consumer feedback and selected their finalists from a pool of eligible semi-finalists. These cars were then evaluated over two days by 39 judges at the former military Gerotek testing facility near Pretoria.
