Suzuki Fronte

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The Suzuki Fronte name has been applied to various small cars produced by Suzuki. The Earliest of these, the Suzulight Fronte 360 of 1959 was a front wheel drive car powered by a two cylinder 360cc engine, and was one of the first Kei cars mass produced. This model was not very popular with the Japanese market, probably because it's front wheel drive mechanism meant that it cost more than other rear engined cars in the same class (such as the Mazda R360 and the Subaru 360). With minor revisions and upgrades the Fronte 360 lasted through 1966.

In 1967 Suzuki introduced the next generation of Fronte cars, this time the design was rear engined and powered by a 3 cylinder engine of 359cc which produced 25hp - a major selling point since other cars in the class such as the Subaru 360 produced only 20hp or even less. While this iteration of the Fronte was a much better seller than the previous Fronte 360 it still only captured a small portion of the increasingly competitive Japanese Kei-car market. Honda had introduced it's new N-360 into the same market segment as Suzuki's new Fronte, and had gained a large portion of the market for itself despite the fact that the N360 was costlier to produce and performed no better than Suzuki's offerings.

In 1970 Suzuki lauched another new Fronte, aside from water-cooling, mechanically it was basically the same as the earlier model, but it featued a redesigned much more space efficient body than the previous model.

In 1979 the fronte was replaced by the Alto.

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