A little late to the party, but this is dead-on and I've experienced it first-hand when I got the Kizashi stuck in some snow.Engineer60 wrote:According to the Suzuki drivers handbook in my Wife's AWD Kizashi the following should be observed
Driving Modes
2WD
If you drive on a dry, paved road, select this mode to save fuel. In this mode, the engine torque transmitted to the rear wheels is limited to the minimum. (As a result, the vehicle runs in a quasi-front-wheel-drive condition.)
i-AWD
This mode is for all normal driving. In almost all road surface conditions,the system keeps distributing engine torque to the rear wheels in the most suitable proportion for varying conditions under automatic control.
In the i-AWD mode, the i-AWD controller monitors the driver’s vehicle control operations and conditions of the vehicle. Based on the sensed conditions, the controller electronically controls the power coupling so that optimum torque is distributed to the rear wheels.
This function improves driving stability and driving performance on rough roads and stabilizes driving performance even on snow-covered up-hill roads or the like.
During constant speed driving, torque distribution to the rear wheels is reduced almost to the front-wheel-drive condition, thus improving fuel consumption.
Even when in fwd mode, the rear wheels still spun. So you're always in awd, just not so much awd in the fwd mode.As far as reliability, the car is what you get with solid japanese engineering and manufacturing. For a brand new platform and such a limited release, it has very, very few issues, and those that it have are typically very minor.
I've driven the kizashi from Wisconsin to Alabama where the temperature varied from below freezing to 80 degrees. And the car had zero issues. I actually had to worry more about the tires than anything else since it was the snow set. The Kizashi is old-school Japanese build quality married with today's tech. My wife just commented on how nice the Kizashi is after renting a newer car on a work trip. We have a new Merc A series that parks next to us in our garage and the Kizashi still looks better even though it's 5 years older.
