Suzuki's pepped-up Swift gives tons of fun for a pretty low price. Can it outshine the Mini Cooper, asks Patrick Comyn
Having recently reached the ripe old age of 30 and following the post-Christmas trauma of realising that I am getting somewhat rounder than I should be, I decided to make some changes in my life.
Eat a bit better, sleep a bit longer and go back to getting some exercise. Gyms make me feel nauseous, and while I have helped pay the mortgage for many of them I have seldom actually attended.
So I have decided to brave the outdoors and take up running. Like any good journalist I did my research and found out that since I was incredibly flat-footed (something I found out by standing with wet feet on a newspaper incidentally) then I would need the right shoes for the job.
Now I am not sure if you have been in a sports shop lately, but they tend to abuse a few definitions of the language. Firstly they are not so much shops, as nightclubs. Upon walking in to a city centre branch of a major sports outlet there were about five teenagers, dressed in tracksuits, dancing hypnotically to rave music.
It took a little while for me to realise that these were shop assistants. But here again your reporter encountered a problem. While several of them bounded over to me with wild-eyed excitement, my question involving my flat-footed gait left them as bewildered as someone trying to apply to the CAO online.
I was thrust several boxes of the most expensive shoes on the shelf and assured that these ones were "rapid" when it was perfectly clear that the only "running" these shoes were suitable for were away from gardaí.
Which sort of neatly leads me on to my drive in the Suzuki Swift Sport. Thankfully, against all the odds of misnamed things these days, the Swift Sport is both swift and sporty.
Anyone with even a passing interest in motor cars will realise that the Suzuki Swift has been receiving widespread praise since it was launched in its present guise and has become one of the most popular superminis in Ireland because of its cute looks, willing engines and superb value.
It is probably no coincidence that it looks a little like a Mini and this new version, with its 125bhp 1.6-litre engine was naturally going to lead to comparisons with the Mini Cooper.
Visually, the clues are there to the car's performance, with a deeper front bumper incorporating a lower grille. There is also a redesigned rear bumper and lights and some particularly handsome 17" alloy wheels. Inside there is a red and black trim combination, some really good sports seats and brushed stainless steel pedals. But as we know, a little cosmetics does not a hot, or should I say warm, hatch make.
Under the bonnet as mentioned is a newly developed twin-cam 1.6-litre VVT petrol engine, putting out 125bhp and 148Nm of torque and this will get the Swift Sport to a theoretical 200km/h after taking 8.9 seconds to get to 100km/h. These figures might not be awe-inspiring in these days of 200bhp hot hatchbacks, but what the Swift Sport offers is honest-to-goodness fun.
The regular Swift is a fun car to drive and adding a little bit more beef makes this even truer. The chassis loves a back road and even though there is ESP fitted as standard, it seldom has to do much work, as Suzuki's engineers have earned their stripes.
There have been specially stiffened and strengthened components added to provide for better agility and despite having a fairly stiff set-up, the car's ride is not too harsh.
There is MacPherson strut suspension at the front and a torsion beam and coil springs arrangement at the rear, with uprated springs and bushings.
The engine is buzzy and eager in the best traditions of the hot hatch of old, but where this is a problem is when you sit on a motorway where these sounds can begin to grate and you feel like you could do with a sixth gear.
Where you will appreciate this car is driving in the city, where it is agile and easy to park; also out on our twisty and often greasy back roads, where the Swift is squirty and bursting with personality. Sure, it is not all that fast but then we are not allowed to go fast anyway, so having a little amusement within the constraints of the law is what it is all about these days. It gives you so much fun without having to drive it like a kamikaze pilot.
Safety is taken care of by driver and passenger front and side airbags, as well as full-length curtain airbags. There are also ISOFIX attachments on the rear seats.
And helping to avoid an accident in the first place are anti-lock brakes, electronic brake-force distribution (EBD), a brake assist function and ESP.
You won't forget that we have already mentioned the Mini Cooper, a car that has been such a success that Mini may end up replacing their sales staff with vending machines. But look at the price - a Mini Cooper, before you start adding options is going to cost you €24,400, which is €3,405 more expensive than the Swift, and remember that the Swift is giving you Keyless entry, a good audio system, 17" alloy wheels and better standard tyres than you will get on a Mini Cooper straight out of the box.
I have also recently driven both cars and while the Cooper is still a seriously fun car to drive, the Swift Sport was just that little bit better. Having said that, the Mini is not just an investment in emotion, but a financial investment too. There are few cars I can think of that hold their value as well as a Mini Cooper.
So then, would it be worth buying a Suzuki Swift Sport? Well, yes of course. This is an incredibly fun car to drive in a world where most other cars are trying to be SUVs or the merest mention of the word performance and they have given it 200bhp.
This is an honest-to-goodness "sporty" car that is not pretending to be anything else. You know that it will be reliable because it says Suzuki on the front and back.
It has generous space for four people and indeed their luggage and while it might look a lot like a Mini and dare we say it, is every bit as cute, it comes well short where it matters - on price.
Finally, here is something that these days, lives up to its description.
ENGINE:
A 1,586cc 4-cylinder petrol engine offering 125bhp and 148Nm of torque.
SPECIFICATION:
Safety equipment includes driver and passenger airbags, side and curtain airbags, ESP with ABS, EBD and traction control.
Sport model gets keyless entry, automatic climate control, audio controls on steering wheel, 17" alloy wheels,
L/100KM (MPG):
URBAN: 8.9 (31.4)
EXTRA-URBAN: 6.1 (45.6)
COMBINED: 7.2 (39.2)
CO2 EMISSIONS: 175 g/km
ANNUAL ROAD TAX: €391
PRICE: €20,995