It may no longer sell cars in the US, but Suzuki is still Japan's fourth-largest automaker. And now, like its domestic rival Mitsubishi, Suzuki has admitted to cheating fuel emissions testing. Will this type of crap ever end? According to Bloomberg, Suzuki has admitted to having "used an improper method to test the fuel efficiency of its vehicles," and that an official report from the company's chairman is expected shortly. Not at all surprisingly, Suzuki shares have fallen by around 15 percent following this news.

However, things aren't nearly as bad or as embarrassing as they are for Mitsubishi and Volkswagen. Basically, Suzuki said there hasn't been outright manipulation of emissions data and that the difference in testing results are still within an acceptable range. What this is sounding like is that Suzuki realized it made a mistake when reporting to the government authorities its emissions testing data. An honest mistake but still a big mistake, nonetheless. And fortunately, no Suzuki vehicles sold outside of its native Japan are affected (at least so far). What's more, Suzuki itself came forward and admitted its mistake as opposed to covering it up Volkswagen style.

Suzuki, financially speaking, is a much healthier company than Mitsubishi, so chances are it'll be able to handle this mess without having to sell a controlling stake to, say, Nissan, as was the case with Mitsubishi. In any case, we doubt this will be the last an automaker admits to reporting false fuel economy figures.