Magyar Suzuki

Magyar Suzuki
legal form	Részvénytársaság ( joint stock company )
founding	April 25, 1991
Seat	Esztergom , Hungary
management	Hisashi Takeuchi ( 竹内寿志 , CEO ) ; Laszlo Urban (Co-CEO) ; Isaac George (PM)
Number of employees	4274 (2008)
sales	557.7 billion forints (2009)
Branch	Car ; manufacturers Car dealers Car ; suppliers
Website	www.suzuki.hu

47.766944444444 18.749722222222Coordinates: 47 ° 46 ′ 1 ″ N , 18 ° 44 ′ 59 ″ E

Photo of the Suzuki plant in Esztergom.

Magyar Suzuki Zrt. is an automobile manufacturer based in Esztergom, Hungary . In addition to Suzuki (40 percent), C. Itoh (11 percent) and the International Financial Corporation (9 percent) were also involved.

history

Just one year after the start of production, more than 10,000 units of the Suzuki Swift were sold. This made the Suzuki Swift the best-selling car model in Hungary this year. On the occasion of its success, the plant had included the four-door model in its range. Until then, the Swift had only been available as a five-door model, which was located in the compact class. The new notchback model, on the other hand, was in the lower middle class. Its main competitors were the Mazda 323 , the Toyota Corolla and the Nissan Sunny . At that time there was no serious competition from European manufacturers in these segments. At the same time, the factory began assembling the European version of the Suzuki Alto . The vehicle parts for this were largely obtained from the Indian automobile manufacturer Maruti . Only smaller components such as the bumpers, exterior mirrors and the interior were made in Europe. For the next 15 years, Maruti would only devote itself to the production of right-hand drive units.

In the course of 1994, Magyar Suzuki also started exporting its vehicles in order to achieve the maximum possible utilization of the plant. The People's Republic of China , Taiwan , Italy and the Netherlands were the first to be supplied. Around 25,000 units were produced in 1994.

Since 1995 the manufacturer's market share in Hungary has fallen to 20% due to increased competition. A year later, the plant received certification according to the QM standard ISO 9002 . In the same year the 100,000 Hungarian Suzuki rolled off the production line in Esztergom. The latest model was the Subaru Justy , which is largely identical to the Swift's hatchback.

In order to counteract the declining sales figures, triggered by press releases about poor workmanship and the reputation as a deficiency dwarf , Suzuki was forced to revise the Swift. Already implemented in Japan at the end of 1995, the model upgrade at Magyar Suzuki did not take place until the end of 1996, after the Japanese parent company announced that it would completely stop its Swift exports to Europe. Since the revised model was already available in some countries through the import from Japan, but no one wanted to go backwards in terms of technology, the revised model was now also manufactured in the Hungarian plant. Subsequently, the Suzuki Swift was the best-selling car in Hungary until 2001.

In 1998, with the introduction of a certified environmental management system in accordance with ISO 14001 , another step was taken to counteract the bad reputation of cars produced in Hungary. Furthermore, an agreement was made with General Motors for the joint production of a small car.

In the new millennium, Magyar Suzuki then started production of the new Wagon R + , which rolled off the assembly line in badge engineering in accordance with the 1998 agreement with GM . So this was also offered on the European markets as the Opel Agila . Opel Polska produced some body parts as well as the platform for its sister model at the Gliwice plant . Other model variants of the Wagon R + were built there, but in contrast, they consist exclusively of components from Opel production.

At the turn of the millennium, a factory expansion took place, which should enable the production of further car models. After completion, production of the new Suzuki Ignis began there . In 2002 the new generation of the Alto followed. The second generation of the Ignis was already on the market at the end of 2003 and caused a sensation from 2004, especially through participation in intra-European rallies . The racing version was named Super 1600 . It was only through the media success that Suzuki managed to start mass production of the model. The technically outdated Swift and Justy models, on the other hand, have been forced to reduce production numbers in recent years. Subaru responded by adopting the new Ignis as the G3X Justy. In September 2004, Suzuki also presented the new Swift, for which there was no longer a sister model. The market launch took place on February 4, 2005. The redesign of the product range cost around 100 billion forints. Magyar Suzuki therefore describes the period from 2003 to 2005 as the European renaissance . As the largest investment in the Central Transdanubian economic region , the company also received the Best-of-the-Region Award .

With the Suzuki SX4 , Magyar Suzuki has been producing a recreational vehicle for the first time since February 2006. For the newly established partnership with Fiat , the model is also being built here in Badge Engineering as a Fiat Sedici . The Ignis was replaced with the two models. Two months later the assembly of the Alto in Europe was stopped. The successor has since been built in the Indian automobile manufacturer's newly built Manesar plant. The new generation of the Justy served as a replacement. This was, however, a license build by the Japanese Daihatsu Boon. With the Hungarian Daihatsu model, Daihatsu continued the model name of the Daihatsu Sirion .

In the summer of 2007, Magyar Suzuki started the third plant expansion, for which investments of 50 billion forints were made. The Suzuki Splash and the Opel Agila are currently being built in this part of the plant . The parts supplier is still the Polish Opel or GM plant. The current generation of the Swift has been available in Hungary since summer 2010.

The two-millionth vehicle rolled off the assembly line in July 2011.

Magyar Suzuki uses the abbreviation TSM as the manufacturer code for the vehicle identification number . The 9th letter S is used as the factory code for the factory in Esztergom . Vehicles with the letter G there come from Polish production at the Gliwice Opel plant.

Production numbers


1994	1996	1998	2000	2002	2003	2004	2006	2007	2008	2009	2012
19,400	52,000	65,800	77,200	84,600	89,200	94,000	163.963	230,000	282,000	180,000	155,000

Model overview

Illustrated timeline of Magyar Suzuki vehicles since 1992
Type	Brands	1990s								2000s										2010s
Type	Brands	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9	0	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9	0	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th
Microcar			Suzuki Alto 10/1993 to 03/2002									Suzuki Alto 03/2002 to 04/2006
Microvan										Suzuki wagonR 09/2000 to 02/2008								Suzuki Splash 02/2008 to 11/2014
Microvan	/									Opel Agila 09/2000 to 02/2008								Opel Agila / Vauxhall Agila 02/2008 to 11/2014
Small car		Suzuki Swift // Suzuki Swift Sedan 10/1992 to 09/2004 // 10/1993 to 09/2004												Suzuki Swift 09/2004 to 06/2010						Suzuki Swift 06/2010 to 02/2017							Suzuki Swift since 03/2017
					Subaru Justy 09/1995 to 04/2003								Subaru G3X Justy 04/2003 to 09/2007				Subaru Justy 09/2007 to 09/2011
																	Daihatsu Sirion 09/2007 to 09/2011
Mini SUVs										Suzuki Ignis 10/2000 to 04/2003			Suzuki Ignis 04/2003 to 02/2006			Suzuki SX4 02/2006 to 09/2013								Suzuki S-Cross since 10/2013
Mini SUVs																Fiat Sedici 02/2006 to 09/2013
SUV																									Suzuki Vitara since 04/2015
Note: The photos are not necessarily the models from this work, they are for illustration purposes