Fun Mobile: And eternally lures the Jimny

The tiny pine-green used car is 3.65 meters short, three years old, has a good 20,000 kilometers on the tachometer – and should cost a good 30,000 euros. Does this sales offer on a large German online car marketplace sound expensive? Perhaps, but the fact is: There are many used cars of this type on the Internet, which cost a similar amount or even more. Prices that are significantly above the former new car price are not uncommon. The market is there, because the talk is of a cult car that you can no longer buy: the Suzuki Jimny. In Europe, the Japanese manufacturer no longer offers the SUV Winzling for several years. But last but not least among young motorists, it is still extremely popular today. On social media, the Jimny is a hit. Proud owners – and also strikingly many owners – show how they have designed their Jimny with self-built folding table for the camping holiday. It can be seen with roof tent in the far north and on the Mediterranean beach. Asians post about their Jimny passion as well as Europeans and Americans. The mini car looks cute and has become a global phenomenon. In car tests, the Jimny has been given the attribute "rustic" throughout his life. He had the "straight run of a racing boat" that jumps over the waves, and the narrow seats in the rear seats were "no better upholstered than a beer tent clothing", noted a valued colleague of the F.A.Z., who himself is a self-confessed and long-time fan of the car. In other driving tests, the body swaying in corners and the obsolete brakes were complained. The 102 hp engine in the last version was consistently described as okay, but anything but spirited. The affordable mini-edition of the Mercedes G But it is not all about the fans. They value the Jimny as one of the most idiosyncratic small cars ever. The angular car looks with its steep windshield and the vertical rear window like a mini version of the Mercedes off-road classic G-Class. But it's much more affordable. Because the Mercedes G was originally intended as a commercial vehicle for farmers and foresters, but has long since mutated into the Protzkoloss for the Stuttgart half altitude. Compared to the six-figure entry-level prices of the Mercedes off-road car, even the sinfully expensive used jimny are a bargain. Karger purism instead of bells and whistles was always the recipe for success of this car. The same applies to the Jimny, which applies to almost all serious SUVs – from the G model to the Lada Niva to the Land Rover Defender: They can do much more off-road than most of their drivers will ever need. Where: On the Internet there is also a decent selection of used Jimnys with retrofitted snowplow in front of the bonnet to buy for the winter service. When the asphalt ends and the wilderness begins, the Jimny is in his element. Connectable all-wheel drive with reduction gearbox for extra slow-rotating wheels at steep points, a stable ladder frame as a vehicle base, low weight and short overhangs at the bottom and rear make it possible to get much further with it on difficult terrain than most other cars. The ancestor came on the market 56 years ago The somewhat strange name Jimny is a fake word. Allegedly, it is a mixture of the name of the American SUV brand Jeep with the word Mini. What is certain is that the popular SUV has a long line of ancestors. The first of its kind at Suzuki 56 years ago was a car called LJ10. The ancestor of today's Jimny models, which came on the market in Japan in 1970, was only three meters long and belonged there to the super small and inexpensive "Kei-Car" car category. The slim SUV had an air-cooled two-stroke engine with 360 cubic centimeters of displacement and 25 hp of power, about as much as a small motorcycle. It was not intended as a lifestyle vehicle, but as a simple and robust car for people who were on bad roads. The new model was well received by customers, and a few years later, Suzuki began to export the next generation of its low-budget off-road vehicle. In 1979, the car also came to Germany. It was now called LJ80, still tiny and still uncompromisingly minimalist. The passengers in the second row of seats had to sit on folding seats across the direction of travel. Initially, it was delivered as standard as a convertible without a soft top and even without doors. You could order it as a special equipment. Naked sheet metal in the footroom and cockpit In the footroom and cockpit, the driver received a lot of bare sheet metal instead of carpet and plastic bezels. Around 40 hp under the hood ensured that the only 800 kilograms light car made halfway progress. But he also had a great advantage: With a price of 12,500 marks, the equivalent of around 6,400 euros, Suzuki was at that time one of the cheapest models in the SUV segment. In Germany, the manufacturer encountered a market gap with the affordable terrain mini at the beginning of the 80s. The Japanese sold about 16,000 copies of the niche model in this country until 1982. However, the LJ80 had a disastrous vulnerability: it was extremely susceptible to rust because Suzuki had saved on corrosion protection to keep costs down. Nevertheless, the LJ80 also established the cult status of the Suzuki off-road truck dwarfs in Germany. The subsequent model generations, which in the meantime were also sold under the name Samurai, were less pithy, they became increasingly roundish, but continued to sell well. From 1998, the successful model of Suzuki in Germany and other European countries was named Jimny. It was built for two decades before 2018 saw a successor..