Suzuki Swift
Suzuki Swift 1.0 BoosterJet SHVS £11,000 est
WE SAY: SWIFT JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER AND BETTER
New Swift. New platform. New fve-door only policy. New, slightly Jaguar F-type-ish nose. Lots of changes then, and this is one of TG’s favourite superminis we’re talking about. If it’s a bit more Ignis, a bit less S-Cross, they’ll have got away with it. If not, there’ll be tears before bedtime.
This new Swift, weighing in almost 200kg lighter than the outgoing version, arrives in showrooms in June and the initial range will be made up of two petrol engines, an 89bhp 1.2 four pot or a 109bhp 1.0-litre turbocharged triple. Both of these can be mated to Suzuki’s (very) mild hybrid system, tagged SHVS, which simply trims the fuel consumption and emissions of either motor using torque-fll, rather than adding any huge EV benefts.
We drove the 1.0 SHVS manual in toy-stufed, range-topping SZ5 format. This car’s power-to-weight ratio of 118bhp-per-tonne is not far of that of our most beloved warm hatch – the old Swift Sport, at 128bhp-pertonne – and from that, you should get an idea of the new Suzuki’s potency. It’s a perfectly sprightly car, never needing to be soundly thrashed to keep up with trafc fow and indeed feeling a good bit quicker than its already competitive on-paper stats suggest, while its trim frame allows it to turn in with an eagerness that bodes extraordinarily well for the inevitable Sport version. We can’t wait.
It’s also comfortable enough and refned enough to hold its head up in the class, blessed with a spacious – if unadventurous – interior and, as an SZ5, packed to the gunwales with equipment such as adaptive cruise control. We’ve got a few gripes about the steering feel and the quality of some of the plastics, but otherwise the Swift MkIV instantly becomes one of the more likeable, appealing superminis in the segment. In this case, less is therefore indubitably more.