This Japanese Tuner Just Turned the Suzuki Jimny Into a Baby ’90s GMC Typhoon

At this point, dressing up a Suzuki Jimny as some other, more famous 4×4 has become a mini industry of its own in Japan. There are kits that turn the little Suzuki into a G-Wagen, a Defender, a 70 Series Land Cruiser, even a K5 Blazer. But all of those chase off-road royalty, and nobody had thought to chase a muscle truck. Enter Hiroshima’s C.L.Link and its UMC-badged Suzuki Jimny Nomade.

If the squared-off headlights and red three-letter badge look familiar, that’s because this thing is a dead-on homage to the GMC Typhoon. For the unfamiliar, this was a turbocharged, all-wheel-drive terror GMC sold for 1992 and 1993. Packing 280 horsepower and 360 lb-ft from its boosted 4.3-liter V6, the Typhoon hit 60 mph in the low fives and embarrassed plenty of contemporary sports cars during its heyday. Only 4,697 were ever built.

And here’s the part that makes this tribute almost too perfect. The original Typhoon was a hot-rodded GMC Jimmy, which means the formula has now come full circle.

Developed alongside Ryo Ishikawa, the streetwear mind behind #FR2, the kit swaps the Nomade’s round headlights for square units, then adds a dedicated grille, front bumper, and those cheeky red UMC emblems. Out back, the tailgate spare gets deleted in favor of a body-color smoothing panel, while smoked taillights, red reflector lenses, and a Type 1 rear muffler finish the job. Underneath sit 16-inch UNIONRIM TX wheels wrapped in 215/70R16 Toyo Open Country rubber.

And in a scene where lifting a Jimny has basically become an obligation, C.L.Link decided to do something different, and dropped the truck an inch on Eibach coils and Bilstein shocks. They even restaged the Typhoon’s moody period press photo for the reveal.

Before anyone gets carried away, the Nomade’s roughly 100-horsepower 1.5-liter four-cylinder carries over untouched, so this particular Typhoon is not the force of yesteryear. A pair of Recaro buckets up front is probably as close as the performance story gets.

The bigger obstacle though might be finding a donor car. The Nomade racked up an absurd 50,000 orders in its first four days on sale in Japan, forcing Suzuki to suspend the order books entirely. Scoring one to lower might end up being the hardest part of the whole build.

C.L.Link will show the finished build at Tokyo Auto Salon 2027, running January 15-17 at Makuhari Messe, with order books opening alongside the event. Pricing and sales format are being kept under wraps until then, so start hunting for that donor Nomade now.

C.L.Link Suzuki Jimny Nomade “90s American SUV Spec”

Hiroshima’s C.L.Link teamed up with #FR2 founder Ryo Ishikawa to lower, square off, and blackout the Suzuki Jimny Nomade into a scaled-down GMC Typhoon tribute, debuting at Tokyo Auto Salon 2027.