Suzuki Swift Sport
It didn’t get to tackle the hill, but our Swift still impressed on its Goodwood excursion
Drawing crowds at Goodwood
WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT To find out if the new, turbo Swift Sport still offers good, simple hot hatch fun that can compete with the best in class
Given its predecessor’s well-earned reputation as a hot supermini that f lew under many buyers’ radars, there was plenty of interest from Autocar’s staffers in a stint behind the wheel of the Swift Sport. Somehow, I made it to the front of the queue and have been responsible for a significant portion of our car’s 4053 covered miles.
A lot of that distance was spent in stop-start traffic on my cross-london commute, which revealed little, other than a gearshift that wasn’t as precise or satisfying as I’d like. Considering the responsive steering and an eagerness to surge forward at every set of traffic lights with even mild encouragement from my right foot, the vagueness of the six-speed ’box felt a bit out of place.
To experience the Sport as intended, I made sure the journey to this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed used a more engaging route – and the Swift didn’t disappoint.
There’s more than enough grunt from the 1.4-litre engine to entertain without having to eke out every last rev between shifts as you race through the gears. It was how the power is delivered that impressed me the most, the turbocharger providing a welcome punch of mid-range torque to propel the Sport forward in whichever direction I pointed it.
The thing is, this is the kind of car that feels equally rewarding at a slower pace. Whereas a more potent hot hatch reveals only a portion of its potential at road-legal speeds, I didn’t need to be on the limit for the Swift to impress.
Although the steering might be unnaturally heavy for something only a little larger than a supermarket shopping trolley, the Sport still comes alive in the bends. There’s enough grip to let you carry momentum through corners at a pace that larger, heavier hot hatches would struggle to match and the engine is peppy enough to propel you out the other side.
When I arrived at the Festival of Speed, Goodwood’s usually luscious green surroundings had turned an arid yellow on account of July’s heatwave, so naturally the Champion Yellow Swift looked right at home.
The car parks might have been filled with more expensive metal, but the aggressive styling and impossible-to-ignore paintwork still drew plenty of attention – even once it was caked with four days of accumulated grime from the campsite-turned-dustbowl.
The Sport’s fuel economy resolutely refused to dip below 40mpg, no matter how hard I pushed it, which made that particular part of the digital instrument cluster a bit redundant. Happily, it can be switched out for a pair of grininducing bar graphs showing how much power and torque you’re wringing out of the engine at any moment, or how much boost the turbocharger is producing.
This is, of course, the first Swift Sport to use forced induction – and, dials aside, I get the impression it’s a bit embarrassed to admit as much, with little in the way of aural feedback. A part of me wishes Suzuki had added some turbine whistle to truly embrace the turbo. That would have livened up an otherwise plainsounding engine note. The induction whoosh and venomous rumble of our long-term Hyundai i30 N left a much more positive impression when I borrowed it for a few days, even if it is artificially piped into the cabin.
On the other hand, a rorty blow-off valve would probably be a step too far for the Swift, which felt equally comfortable being used as a daily driver as it did on the limit.
It was only the final part of my journey home after the Festival, on a truly terrible piece of northbound M25, that I wished the Swift had a slightly softer, more pliant ride. The Sport’s seats might be comfortable for long-distance drives, but not when the suspension is trying (and failing) to soak up the Tarmac equivalent of a Toblerone bar.