Suzuki Jimny SZ5 GOOD STUFF

REPORT 7

£18,499 OTR/£19,149 as tested/£252pcm

WHY IT’S HERE

Can it possibly be as charming to live with as it is to look at?

DRIVER

Stephen Dobie

YOU’D EXPECT – LIKE THE OLD LAND ROVER DEFENDER ITS DESIGN apes – for there to be a world of winches, diff guards and knobbly tyres available to ensure your Jimny punches well above its weight in the really rough stuff. And there is.

What you might not expect is the vast array of cosmetic tuning out there. There are kits to turn it even more shamelessly into a mini-me Defender, or Mercedes G-Wagen. The wildest of the lot comes from (in)famous Japanese tuner Liberty Walk, whose Jimny conversion apes not just a G-Wagen, but a full Liberty-spec AMG G63.

More sensibly, two companies currently offer a pickup conversion: an actual Suzuki dealer in New Zealand, who’ll hack away at the rear seats and boot for the princely sum of £6,000, or Shropshire Quads in, um, Shropshire. Which is probably more handily located for most of us. The conversions are completely bespoke and they’ll fit canopies or reinforce the suspension for heavier loads. They’ve made one for the RNLI.

There’s also a handful of them fighting crime in Italy. “The carabinieri chose Suzuki to give mobility to women and men engaged in the territory to the defence of respect and correctness, both on-road and off-road,” read a statement when the blues ’n’ twosed Suzuki was unveiled in 2019.

The carabinieri hasn’t added any power to the docile 1.5-litre engine, so criminals won’t need much in the way of motive power to forge a getaway. Enthusiastic use of a skateboard or pogo stick ought to do it. But I don’t think that’s a problem. The little crime-fighting Jimny is so adorable, I suspect most wrongdoers will voluntarily hand themselves in with their faces resembling the heart-eyed emoji.

SPECIFICATION

1462cc, 4cyl, 4WD, 100bhp, 95lb ft

35.8mpg, 178g/km CO2

0–62mph in 12.0secs, 90mph 1135kg

Tiny the Jimny may be, but its battery has proved pretty hardy through lockdown times.

BAD STUFF

Dreams of wild off-road adventures are having to remain just that.