- Doors and Seats
5 doors, 5 seats
- Engine
1.5i, 4 cyl.
- Engine Power
74kW, 133Nm
- Fuel
Petrol (91) 6.3L/100KM
- Manufacturer
FWD
- Transmission
Manual
- Warranty
3 Yr, 100000 KMs
- Ancap Safety
4/5 star (2005)
2011 Suzuki Swift Review
The outgoing Suzuki Swift is the automotive equivalent of hitting the sweet spot in the light car segment. The new Swift is even better than that.
- Great dynamic performance, styling evolution still on the money, better fuel economy, bigger
- Interior materials still feel cheap and nasty, though fit and features are excellent
Model Tested:
- 2010 Suzuki Swift 5dr hatch; 1.4-litre DOHC, 5sp man & 4sp auto, price TBA Feb 2011
CarAdvice Rating:
If you play tennis, every 30 shots or so (if you aren’t Martina Hingis) you actually manage to engage the ball with the sweet spot on the racket. It’s a wonderful, if fleeting, moment. It’s meaningful eye contact and a red-lipstick smile. The (successful) sprint to the train as the pneumatic doors close. Standing on a glorified piece of foam with the humbling hydrodynamic power of the ocean all around … and not getting your face jammed into a sand bank shortly thereafter. In tennis, the ball reaches escape velocity effortlessly, without the racket reverberating your arm off at the shoulder. It kisses the net and screams into the back corner of the other court. Your opponent is, like, 404 – nowhere. Gotta love the sweet spot.
The new Swift is even better than that.
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Suzuki hardly presents a full, one-in-each-segment entrant lineup. It doesn’t field a vehicle for everyone. Maybe it’s concentrating instead on the cars it thinks it can sell strongly on the world stage. Much of that is aimed at the burgeoning Indian market, where Maruti Suzuki is the biggest name on four wheels, and the halo car is the Alto … in inverse proportion to its size.
The new Swift will be available globally with a new 1.2-litre petrol engine and a 1.3-litre diesel built under licence from Fiat. We’re not going to get either of those engines in Australia when the new Swift arrives in February 2011. We’ll be getting an all-new 1.4-litre naturally aspirated four with 70kW at 6000rpm and 130Nm at 4000rpm – within a smidge of the outgoing Swift’s outputs but with significantly improved economy. That’s thanks mainly to a serious re-think of the engine’s internal friction, reduced by a range of engineering tweaks including an offset crank, lower friction rings and shimless tappets.
The 1.4 revs, flat-chat, to 6500rpm and features a wonderfully subtle soft rev limiter that maintains peak rpm until you wake up and decide to select the next gear. It does its best work over 3000rpm, delivering admirable mid-range urge. I don’t know about you, but when I hear the ‘1.4’ I start to think: ‘yawn’. Not so with the Swift – this engine is at the very least sufficiently engaging. It’s refined when you’re cruising and raucous when you’re punting. And it sounds alright, too. It’s not a WRX – but then, it will be less than half the price.
CarAdvice was given a sneak peek and test drive of the new Swift at Suzuki’s Ryuyo test track in Hamamatsu, Japan. Ryuyo, built in 1964, is the company’s motorcycle development skunkworks, offering a blindingly fast 6.5km circuit with esses and a hairpin, not to mention an epic 2.3km main straight. After 10 laps interspersed across four new Swifts I can tell you that in the real world of roundabouts, intersections, speed limits and traffic, most owners will never appreciate how seriously good the new Swift’s dynamics are. It sits supremely composed at speed up to 180km/h and behaves obediently in corners. It’s engaging but not malevolent, even when provoked. Many people won’t know for a second what they’re missing out on, but for those who do, the Swift is a tremendous car to punt hard. If you’re impressed with the Ford Fiesta or Renault Clio – or even the Volkswagen Polo – you’ll also find yourself having a ball in a Swift.
Steering is new, too. It’s electric, but the feel is great and the gearing is set up to offer not much assistance close to on-centre, and less at the lock-to-lock extremities.
The five-speed manual is excellent, although the light car market must be on the cusp of accommodating six speeds with three pedals, and thankfully a full torque-converter four-speed auto, not a constant-velocity transmission. In terms of absolute performance, the manual is ahead by a nose. The auto won’t disappoint, but the manual is better.
You are also the beneficiary of four-corner disc brakes on the top-spec GLX models, although the GL has drums at the rear. Brake pedal feel is pretty good, with either setup, too. Even when you’re working them hard. The rear drums on the base car don’t seem to comprise a singular disadvantage.
Boot space? There isn’t any, statistically. If you’re thinking about swinging a cat or getting into body disposal, the Swift still won’t suit. At least not with the rear seats upright. You’ll have to do without passengers if you need a couple of golf bags transported about the place. (The rear seats offer 60:40 fold.) With the rear seats face-planted, however, you’ll almost certainly have enough room for even unwieldy items like pushbikes.
Second car? First car? The new Swift is probably a lot better than that, but the Swift is certainly ideal as both, or either. The new Swift is better – maybe not such a departure visually, but 15 per cent better all around. And that means it scores 11 out of 10 when rating the best light cars on the market.
If you’re in the market for a light car like the Swift, drive a Mazda2, a Ford Fiesta and a Polo at the same price point for comparison. All four are excellent cars – and don’t forget that the devil often isn’t in the detail with cars. The prime differentiators are often less related to the specifications than the practicalities. You might be a golfer, a bushwalker, a dog lover, a gardener, a paddler or a cyclist – and in these cases as well as a thousand shades of end-use in between it pays to see how well each of the cars in the short-list manages to accommodate your lifestyle. Specifications for Australia are not yet forthcoming (we’ll keep you apprised as information is available).
One thing’s for sure: Come February 2011 the sweet-spot orientation of the new Swift will be unchanged. Except for getting both swifter and sweeter.
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