Start with what the Suzuki Alto is: a 3/5-door hatchback / 3-door van with 539 cc List of Suzuki engines#LJ50, built from 1979, as the oil crises and the first emissions rules rewired the industry. What it meant takes a little longer.
How it came about
The Suzuki Alto (Japanese: スズキ・アルト, Hepburn: Suzuki Aruto) is a kei car produced by Suzuki since 1979. The model, currently in its ninth generation, was first introduced in 1979 and has been built in many countries worldwide.
The Alto originated as a commercial vehicle derivative of the Fronte, but over time the Alto nameplate gained in popularity and by 1988 it replaced the Fronte name completely. The Alto badge has often been used on different cars in Japan and in export markets, where it is considered a city car.
The hardware
The engine is 539 cc List of Suzuki engines#LJ50; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. On the scales it comes to 530 -. Drive goes through a 4-speed manual. The wheelbase is 2150 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
In the Suzuki line-up the Suzuki Alto has a clear place: the factory was Kosai, Shizuoka. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Mercedes-Benz G-Class, the Lancia Delta, the Toyota Supra. Its Suzuki stablemates include the Suzuki XL-7 and the Suzuki Landy.
Owning one today
There is no federal ownership record for the Suzuki Alto — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.