Looking back on our time with this practical estate car, it deserves to be a far more common sight
Mark Pearson Mark.Pearson@haymarket.com
1.8 Hybrid SZ5 CVT
MY FIRST REPORT on the Suzuki Swace highlighted the fact that most people had no idea what it was. Now, at the end of our time together, the same still holds true. Indeed, in my time with it, I don’t think I ever saw another. But don’t go thinking that’s a bad thing.
You see, the Swace was launched two years ago in a blaze of obscurity, and I think its inconspicuous nature is great. When people ask me at dinner parties what car I’m driving, I can tell them it’s a Swace and watch in delight as their faces fall in total bemusement.
Here’s the thing, though. It may have a little-known name and be rather conventional-looking on the surface, but underneath it’s a very well-sorted and thoroughly likeable estate car. It’s good to drive and impressively refined, for starters. It’s also spacious, comfortable and well equipped. And I found it swift enough for everyday duties and very economical.
How economical? Well, at the end of my tenure, the digital readout told me my overall average was 62.4mpg, which is not far off the official figure of 64.2mpg. My own calculations, arrived at by brimming the tank and noting the mileage, suggest 56.5mpg is nearer the mark overall, but that’s still an impressive figure for a petrol-powered car of this size and weight – albeit one assisted by an electric motor.
Its abstemious nature pleased me, but not as much as its temperature controls. As someone who suffers – mostly in silence, of course – from a continually swinging internal thermometer, I can be sweat-inducingly hot one minute and bone-numbingly cold the next. I was grateful, then, for the Swace’s rotary climate controls.
Thanks to those, I could turn the temperature up or down in a blink. Many new cars require you to navigate through a hard-to-fathom touchscreen or use difficult-to-locate sliders or buttons to do the same, often in circumstances that mean taking your eyes off the road.
It’s the traditional approach to these controls, as well as to the instruments generally and the interior furnishings and even the overall design, that sums up what I like most about the Swace. It’s an uncomplicated car, one that was easy to jump into and drive away on first acquaintance. True, it has many competent rivals, but some feel like they’re trying too hard to be either too modern and on-trend, or unnecessarily spo
