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Suzuki sold nearly 5,500 vehicles in Canada last year, down three percentage points from the year before. Those declining numbers came despite overall auto sales in Canada improving nearly 6% year-over-year in 2012, according to figures from DesRosiers Automotive Consultants.

Suzuki held roughly same market share as Volvo at 0.3% of overall sales in the country in 2012, DesRosiers’ figures show.

Suzuki’s sales have, however, tumbled nearly 30% in the first two months of 2013, far outpacing the declines of the broader market at nearly 3%.

Suzuki Canada’s [SCI] decision to halt auto sales in Canada follows a similar decision last November in the U.S. after the American Suzuki Motor Corp. filed for Chapter 11 protection in the face of dwindling sales and high foreign exchange.

Bernard Swiecki, senior project manager at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., said Suzuki’s vehicles were also not tailored to the U.S. market in the way the vehicles of its Japanese competitors like Toyota, Honda, Mazda and others were.

“It’s a combination of two things: They had a product lineup that needed to be extended and updated, combined with a really significant downturn in the market during the times of the recession,” Mr. Swiecki.

He said the Suzuki Kizashi had developed a bit of a “cult following” in the U.S., and received some positive media attention.

But that same engineering wasn’t applied to a wider portfolio of products in the U.S. to attract a broader customer base there, he said.