Suzuki Jimny Rhino Special Edition Confirmed for Australia: Five-Door XL Gets a Yellow Coat

Image credit: Suzuki Australia. Image shows the standard five-door Jimny XL on which the Rhino is based.

The little Suzuki you cannot keep in stock just got another reason to sit on a waiting list. Suzuki Australia has quietly stood up a Register Your Interest page on its website for a new Jimny Rhino Special Edition, with teaser shots of a five-door Jimny XL wrapped in Kinetic Yellow and a contrasting black roof. The full reveal is set for June 2026, and the brand says cars will land in showrooms later this year.

This is a cosmetic edition rather than a hardware play. The engine, gearbox, transfer case, axles and chassis all carry over from the regular five-door Jimny XL. What you are paying for, when pricing eventually lands, is a paint and graphics package, a new wheel design, and the bragging rights that come with owning the first Jimny in Australia to wear the Rhino badge officially.

What Suzuki Australia has actually confirmed

The official source for the Rhino is a single landing page on Suzuki Australia's site at suzuki.com.au/jimny-rhino-ryi-form. It describes the Rhino as a special edition built for tougher terrain, invites buyers to register their interest, and confirms that more detail is coming. The teaser images released alongside it tell us the rest of the story.

The exterior is finished in Kinetic Yellow, a colour that has previously been a three-door exclusive in most Australian states (outside Queensland), with a contrasting Bluish Black Pearl roof. A Rhino badge appears on the front guards and a wraparound graphic runs along the doors. The wheels are a new design, but appear to retain the same 15-inch sizing and 195/80 R15 tyres as the regular Jimny XL, which is the right call for keeping off-road tyre choice and ride compliance unchanged. Lower trim accents and the badges aside, this is the Jimny you already know.

Pricing (what we know, and what we don't)

Suzuki has not put a number on the Rhino yet. For reference, here is where the rest of the 2026 Jimny family sits today, using Suzuki Australia's confirmed nationwide drive-away pricing.

Past Suzuki specials in Australia, like the Jimny Heritage XL released in 2024 and the Vitara Series II Black, have generally added $1,000 to $3,000 to the equivalent base car for the cosmetic kit. If Suzuki follows the same playbook here, the Rhino should land somewhere between $41,500 and $43,500 driveaway in manual form, with the four-speed auto another $2,500 or so up the range.

Specifications (carry-over from the Jimny XL)

Nothing in the Rhino brief points to a hardware change. The 1.5-litre K15B petrol four has been the only engine on the Australian Jimny since the JB74 facelift in 2024, the transfer case is mechanically locking with proper low range, and the suspension is still leaf-free coil springs on solid axles at both ends. That is the bit that makes a Jimny a real off-roader rather than a soft, monocoque cosplay.

What changes on the Rhino

The Rhino sits in the dress-up tradition that Suzuki has been running on Jimny for a while now, alongside the Heritage Edition of 2023 to 2024 and overseas badges like the Pro and 5-Door Heritage. The visible changes appear to be:

• Body colour: Kinetic Yellow paired with a Bluish Black Pearl roof. That two-tone combination is genuinely new on the XL bodyshell.
• Graphics: a Rhino badge on the front guards plus side body graphics running from front door to rear quarter. Bolder than the Heritage decals.
• Wheels: a new alloy design with the same 15-inch / 195/80 R15 tyre fitment as the regular XL, so off-road tyre swaps stay easy.
• Interior: Suzuki has not shown the cabin yet, but the brand's past special editions have typically added contrast stitching, embroidered headrests and badged floor mats rather than reworked tech.

For us, the wheel decision is the interesting one. A lot of Jimny owners ditch the factory wheel for a 15-inch steel or beadlock to fit a chunkier all-terrain. By keeping the same diameter and offset, Suzuki has avoided locking buyers into Rhino-only rubber.

Safety

ANCAP last assessed the three-door Jimny in 2019 and awarded a three-star rating under the protocols of the day. The five-door Jimny XL has not been separately assessed by ANCAP, so the Rhino, which shares the XL's structure, is best described as not yet rated. Suzuki Australia offers six airbags as standard on the current car, with autonomous emergency braking, lane departure warning, hill descent control, hill hold and a reversing camera. Adaptive cruise control is not available.

Two things to flag. The Jimny was designed before today's side impact protocols, and recent ANCAP testing of similarly sized small SUVs has been brutal. Anyone using a Jimny as a daily-driver family car needs to go in with eyes open on this. The Rhino does not change that calculus.

How it compares on CarSorted

The Jimny does not have a direct rival in Australia at its size and price. That is the whole pitch. The nearest cars on our directory either cost much more, offer a much softer chassis, or both. Here is the picture on CarSorted today.

The closer you push to like-for-like, the better the Rhino looks. The five-door Wrangler Rubicon is the only mainstream rival offering the same body style with the same chassis recipe, and the price gap to the Rhino is more than $50,000 driveaway. Even compared with the larger GWM Tank 300, the Jimny is around $7,500 cheaper, 700kg lighter and significantly more nimble in tight bush. The trade-off is power, towing and on-road manners. Read our take on the upcoming 212 T01 here: 2026 212 T01 update.

The CarSorted angle: why the Rhino works for buyers who already wanted a Jimny

Here is the thing about the Jimny: most buyers are not cross-shopping on spec. They want a small, mechanically simple, character-rich 4x4 with a real low-range transfer case, and the cars that genuinely meet that brief are now thin on the ground. On CarSorted, the five-door Suzuki Jimny GLX sits with one of the highest character-to-price ratios in our small-4x4 segment, with an annual running cost we estimate at around $8,800, a 5-year unlimited-km warranty and a real-world fuel use closer to 7.2 L/100km on 95 RON. The Rhino does not change those numbers. It changes the colour.

That is a feature, not a bug. If you were already planning to buy a Jimny XL this year, the Rhino is the version to register interest in. The base car is unchanged, the warranty is unchanged, and the only real risk is the special-edition stock running out before you get to the front of the queue. If you were not planning to buy a Jimny, the Rhino is unlikely to be the thing that converts you, because the case for the Jimny has always been about hardware and badge, not about decals.

See how the rest of the small 4x4 segment compares on our directory: Jimny GLX | GWM Tank 300 Lux | Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 2-Door | Wrangler Rubicon 4-Door. Or jump straight into the full CarSorted directory to filter by ground clearance, low range and braked towing.

What this means for buyers

Three takeaways. First, if you have been waiting for a XL with a bit more personality, register your interest at Suzuki this week. Suzuki has not said how many Rhinos are coming, but Heritage Edition stock disappeared in weeks, and the Rhino is the most visually distinctive Jimny Suzuki Australia has built in recent memory. Second, do the maths on driveaway. At an estimated $41,500 driveaway, the Rhino is still cheaper than a base GWM Tank 300 and roughly half the price of a four-door Wrangler Rubicon, even though it lines up against neither on size or power. The competition for your money is really the standard Jimny XL beside it on the lot, not anything else on the showroom floor.

Third, expect a wait. Jimny demand in Australia has consistently outrun supply, and limited-run editions tend to clear at full RRP. If a Rhino genuinely matters to you, treat that Register Your Interest form as a soft pre-order rather than a casual sign-up. Cross-shop one against our growing coverage of the next-generation Jimny EV, which Suzuki is testing now, before deciding whether to buy a current petrol Rhino or hold out for what is coming.

Useful comparisons elsewhere on CarSorted: Suzuki Jimny GLX | Suzuki e Vitara Motion | How ANCAP ratings work | Suzuki e Vitara review.