The Suzuki Swift is back and is better than ever.By Eric Blair
AFTER about five years out of the Australian market, the Suzuki Swift made a comeback in February 2005.
And an impressive comeback it has been, the new car approaching European standards of handling and body rigidity yet being quiet and refined in the way it handles most roads.
Design is right up to date with the current tall and boxy look.
The shape won’t appeal to all at first glance but we have to admit to enjoying the lines the more time we spent with the car.
But the styling isn’t just there to look trendy, it’s extremely practical as well. There’s very good interior space for a car in the 3.7-metre super-mini class.
The front seats have plenty of fore-and-aft adjustment while the driver’s seat can also be raised and lowered to let it suit a big variety of Australian frames.
There’s room for reasonably large adults in the back seat if those in the front are willing to slide their seats forward.
As a family car for parents and a couple of kids under the age of about 14 or 15, this Suzuki will do the job well.
Boot space is decent for a car of this size and there’s the option of folding or double-folding the back seats to make it better.
The Swift comes with a 1.5-litre twin-cam, multi-valve engine that puts out a handy 74 kilowatts and 133 Newton metres.
Torque peaks between 3000 rpm and 4000 rpm making it a very driveable engine.
It can run in a high gear most of the time and delivers good fuel economy as a result.
On test we found it typically using six to seven litres per 100 kilometres in country driving and didn’t rise a lot more, to nine to 10 litres per 100, even in the hard driven suburban slog.
And if you do want to punt the Swift along with the gearbox you will find the gearshift better than average for an affordable front-drive car.
As mentioned, the Swift almost feels like a European car on the road and can be driven hard without bringing in too much understeer and feels nicely balanced while doing so.
There was more wind noise from the front of the car we road tested than we had expected.
The door mirror housing are pretty large and may have contributed to the noise.
Other than that, the Swift was quiet and refined in the way it handled most roads and even some back-road shockers didn’t upset it the way they could some other small cars.
The Swift comes in two variants – the standard Swift at $15,990 and the semi-sporty Swift S-series, with alloy wheels, foglights and four airbags (the standard Swift gets two) for $17,990. That’s with a five-speed manual gearbox, the four-speed automatic transmission adds a further $2000.
Even better news for Swift fans is that it seems likely that there will be hot hatch variant similar to the previous GTi variant.
The name hasn’t been decided as yet but it seems certain that it will be coming here, perhaps late next year.
To arrange a test drive contact Dandenong Suzuki, 55 Lonsdale Street, Dandenong. Phone 9708 5777.
