Neil Lyndon finds the new Suzuki Jimny as silly as it is loveable
The tiny price tag, stature and load-space of the new Suzuki Jimny make it endearing and unusable in equal measure, finds Neil Lyndon
Our local deer-stalker takes an interest in the cars on this page. When he heard that I had attended the launch of the new Suzuki Jimny, he told me: ‘My daughter desperately wants one of those’.
Next time I went round to his house, therefore, I took the scale model of the new Jimny in its presentation box which Suzuki had given to journalists attending the launch. ‘Here,’ I said, ‘this is probably as near as your daughter’s likely to come to a Jimny and, if she’s got any sense, it’s probably as near as she should get.’
The new Jimny is, unquestionably, the most endearing and entertaining car to go on sale this year but it has two significant drawbacks. One: it’s going to be almost impossible to buy. Two: for 90% of the uses for which most people need a car, the Jimny is laughably, ludicrously impractical.
Suzuki’s GB importers are up against such crippling restrictions in supply that, effectively, all of the Jimnys they will receive for the next two years have already been sold. Meanwhile, the load-space in the back of this car is hardly wide enough to store an A4 envelope; it’s agonisingly awkward for a fullgrown adult to get in and out of the back seats; the front seats have so little shoulder room that you are jammed up against the door as if you are confined in an Iron Maiden; and the ride of the Jimny on the road is harsher and more jolting than the most uncom- fortable dodgem at the fairground (which the Jimny matches for pace, with 0-60 mph acceleration in 11.9 seconds and average fuel consumption of 35.8 mpg). How such a combination of unappealing qualities adds up to a car for which eager customers are forming queues to hand over £15,499 may be counted as one of the mysteries of our age. Even more mysteriously, I would cheerfully join them.
The Jimny has had legions of devoted fans ever since it first appeared in 1998, not least because it didn’t change much from that moment, remaining as original and recognisable as a Land Rover Defender, which it rivalled for off-road ability and surpassed for build quality (Suzuki products, as a whole, have some of the highest ratings of all cars in production for customer satisfaction and after-sales service). Anybody who knew their countryside onions – such as hill-farmers and foresters – knew that the Jimny was indomitable in the clag.
The same is true of the new model, which retains a traditional ladder-frame chassis but now has the most advanced Allgrip Pro form of selectable fourwheel drive, along with hill descent control and a two-stage brake support system. All this gizmometry puts the Jimny almost on a par with Land Rover products for mud-plugging at less than half the price of any of them and about a quarter of the price of some. Meanwhile, the new Jimny has creature comforts which the old model would scorn as foppish, such as heated seats and tinted windows, air conditioning, satnav and Bluetooth. And, while the original Jimny was always perjink, the new car is so cute you could almost hang it on a Christmas tree as a decoration. With colour contrasted roof, chunky wheelarch mouldings and light assemblies recessed into the radiator assembly or moulded into the bumpers, the new Jimny’s resemblance to a Tonka toy is so close that a toddler would probably presume that it had been brought home for his sole pleasure. All new cars are, invariably, bigger than the ones they replace but the new Jimny is shorter by 30mm, making it look even more like an egg-box on wheels.
I left our neighbour wondering if, in view of the supply problems for the new Jimny, he might buy his daughter a second-hand Jimny and use it himself for his stalking. That’s such a good idea I am tempted to follow suit.
“
With colour contrasting roof, the new Jimny’s resemblance to a Tonka toy is so close