Suzuki Ignis

Update Grippy small 4x4 excels in cold weather

IT’S taken nearly a year, but the recent cold snap and some time in the countryside have shown me exactly how much grit and grip our four-wheel-drive Suzuki Ignis SZ-5 ALLGRIP has.

I spent a few days away from my home in the capital working at the office of our sister title evo in rural Bedfordshire. It made a nice change to throw the car around some slippery country lanes at pace rather than sit in endless traffic. The Ignis is bags of fun to drive; not especially refined or smooth, but certainly entertaining.

The squat stance has to help, but the winter’s first big freeze proved the car’s ability to climb a frosty slope to the hilltop crescent where I live, then manoeuvre its way down using the Hill Descent system.

We’ve already been won over by its quirky looks, clever ‘space creating’ interior design and long kit list. Our top-spec SZ-5 has all the bells and whistles as standard, including keyless entry and go, climate control, a reversing camera and camera brake support, which has given me a confidence boost when I’ve been teaching my teenage son to drive.

The tech goes beyond buttons and displays. Our Ignis also wears an SHVS badge, signifying its mild hybrid credentials. Under the passenger seat sits a small lithium-ion battery pack, which soaks up energy from the regenerative braking.

On acceleration the system uses a simple belt-driven ‘Integrated Starter Generator’ (which also acts as a starter motor) to give the Ignis an electrical boost. The car certainly feels nippy in town and my learner son George has remarked on how sharply it pulls into gaps in city traffic. You only really notice it in the first couple of seconds, although decent fuel figures of 54.5mpg may be a direct result of the system. In theory it should also lower the CO2 output, and when combined with the 4WD, it helps the car cover 0-62mph in a claimed 11.5 seconds.