Fourth-gen supermini has a fresh look, a new electrified engine and Suzuki’s trademark lightness and compactness to offer former Ford Fiesta buyers
MATT PRIOR @automattictransmission
TESTED 21.3.24, BORDEAUX, FRANCE ON SALE APRIL PRICE £19,799
So many small cars have been cut from manufacturers’ ranges lately that Suzuki estimates there are 250,000 people in the UK who bought a supermini in the past three years but won’t be able to replace it like-for-like when the time comes.
There’s no longer a Ford Fiesta, a Kia Rio or a Nissan Micra and more besides – 28% of the small car sector has been binned off. There is, though, a new Suzuki Swift, and this is it. And it’s good.
It’s a conventional small car offering and very Suzuki – light and frugal, with a strong list of equipment and keenly priced.
Although small cars’ share of the overall UK market has shrunk from 20% to 15%, “the B-segment is important and our customers want a small car”, says Suzuki UK’s cars director, Dale Wyatt.
The new Swift is the fourth generation of a global model launched in 2004, although there were two previous European versions before that, so we have had Swifts here for 40 years.
Suzuki calls this one all-new, although the ‘all’ is doing some heavy lifting, because who’s making new small cars platforms these days? This Swift rides on an evolution of the previous Swift’s Heartect architecture, although there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with that.
It has a transversely mounted engine, front-wheel drive (with a four-wheel-drive option) and a 1.2-litre three-cylinder petrol engine, mildly hybridised, as standard. There’s a five-speed manual gearbox and, on front-driven models, a CVT option.
Suspension is by MacPherson struts at the front and a torsion beam at the rear.
The brakes are ventilated discs at the front, drums at the back.
The appearance is new, but the Swift is broadly the same size as before, so it remains one of the smaller cars in the class, blurring whatever lines still exist between city car and supermini, at 3.86m long and 1.74m wide.
Gratifyingly, FWD versions come in at less than 1000kg. Wyatt says Suzuki makes cars that “tend to be a little smaller than the competition. They’re smaller, neater, lighter. There’s a Japanese phrase for it [shosho-kei-tan-bi, apparently]. It’s a philosophy.”
Sound-deadening has been applied, though, in places where it usually doesn’t make it onto a Suzuki. There’s underbody sound an
