TUCKED AWAY IN THE RURAL SETTING OF Makinohara City, Japan, about an hour away from Suzuki's headquarters in Hamamatsu, is the company's revered factory, the Sagara Plant. What makes this factory special is that all of the company's automobile engines are built and assembled here. These include everything from the 660-cc Kei-car engines to the XL7's 3.6-liter V-6. The amazing thing about the Sagara Plant is its growth in the last decade. Where it cranked out only 46,000 engines in 1996, that number has multiplied more than 25 times.

In 2005, Sagara produced 1,230,000 engines—more than half of those being powerplants for its Kei cars. Naturally the number of employees has also grown—from about 500 in 1997 to more than 1200 today. And with the launch of the new XL7 (as well as other future engines that Suzuki would not comment on), the Sagara Plant has plans to expand even more. Several new buildings are currently being erected by 3.5 acres, bringing the total to nearly 500 acres.

Within the massive edifices at Sagara, employees work side-by-side with state-of-the-art machines, as every piece of an engine—from valve stems to crankshafts—is created with meticulous precision. Once the engines are assembled, they're shipped off to Suzuki's other plants for installation in various vehicles.

Sagara is one of six Suzuki factories in Japan, but is fast becoming its most important. Suzuki has plans to manufacture more powerplants in the future—what types of engines is still a closely-kept secret—but if they're anything like the XL7's 3.6 liter, there's a lot to look forward to.

• At Sagara, engines are built from scratch, from raw castings to shipping crates. The XL7 engines are then shipped to CAMI in Ontario, Canada, where production of the new XL7 began in September.
• Tamao Momose, the plant manager at Sagara and Takahiro Noyori, group leader of the engine design department, inspect the XL7's cylinder heads. Suzuki is a motor company, and that's immediately apparent in the highly efficient Sagara plant.
• Even though much of today's automobile production involves robotic laser welders and the like, lots of handwork goes into building the XL7's 3.6-liter DOHC V-6. The chain-driven camshafts, aided by variable valve timing, help this engine have a broad powerband.

Published by ROAD & TRACK