Wowza. When was the last time you saw a Suzuki X-90? For me, it's been years. And I mean years. You didn't see many of them back in the day, either. Suzuki imported just 7,205 of them into the U.S. between 1996 and 1998. This one I found on Facebook Marketplace about 45-minutes south of the Triple Wide Palance is a 1996.
Hard to fathom why they didn't sell. I mean, a two-passenger sport-utility vehicle with a tiny trunk and a face only a mother could love? Four-wheel-drive was optional, too. What could go wrong?
Quite a bit, apparently.
The X-90 was essentially a Suzuki Sidekick underneath, although with a radically different two-seat body, a removable T-top and, in true Suzuki fashion, a part-time four-wheel-drive system. It actually began life as a concept at the 1993 Tokyo Motor Show, where the public and press apparently liked the idea enough that Suzuki decided, "What the hell, let's build it."
And build it they did.
The X-90 also arrived in the wake of another Suzuki with a somewhat checkered reputation: the Samurai. The Sidekick had already become Suzuki's larger, more civilized small SUV, while the Samurai disappeared from the U.S. market after 1995.
Much of the Samurai's reputation had been shaped by Consumer Reports, which famously rated it "Not Acceptable" after its 1988 emergency-avoidance testing found that it could tip up. Suzuki sued Consumer Reports in 1996, alleging product disparagement. The litigation dragged on for years, but the two sides eventually settled in 2010. Consumer Reports stood by its testing while acknowledging that its oft-repeated statement that the Samurai "easily rolls over in turns" had been misconstrued. Importantly, Suzuki received no monetary compensation.
Regardless of where you come down on the Samurai controversy, the episode certainly didn't help Suzuki's image in the emerging small-SUV market.
And the X-90 was Suzuki's answer to a very different question: What if you took a small, capable 4x4 and turned it into a two-seat personal runabout?
The idea wasn't entirely crazy. Jeep had been selling civilian off-road vehicles since the early 1940s, and by the mid-1990s small SUVs were beginning to move from niche transportation into the mainstream. The Toyota RAV4 and Honda CR-V, in particular, were demonstrating that there was a growing market for smaller, more carlike SUVs.
The problem was that Suzuki's X-90 was too niche.
It had only two seats, limited luggage space, an oddball three-box coupe body and a price that put it up against vehicles that were considerably more practical. Even Suzuki admitted it hadn't done much to promote the X-90. By 1997, sales were already in the tank, with just 888 sold during the first three months of that year.
In other words, the X-90 was a clever solution to a problem that very few people actually had.
Suzuki pulled the plug after the 1998 model year. There wasn't really a direct replacement; the conventional Sidekick continued, while Suzuki moved toward the more mainstream Grand Vitara for 1999.
Today, of course, the X-90 looks less like a bad idea and more like Suzuki being about 20 years early. A two-seat, funky little SUV with a removable roof sounds downright fashionable now.
With my 2009 RAV4 possibly DOA, could this one that popped up on Facebook Marketplace be its perfect replacement? Although it has 218,000-miles on it, which is, frankly, rather high, the timing belt has been recently changed along with a new clutch? Asking price is $4,250. Hopefully my wife will talk me out of this if push comes to shove.
