Suzuki Swift Sport Review: Fun, Flawed And Far Too Expensive
Pros
Cons
“It’s fine, it’s not an expensive car,” I told myself while climbing into the Suzuki Swift Sport’s cheap and cheerful cabin. Yes, all the stuff you want - a sat-nav system, Apple Car Play, climate control - is here and standard-fit, but there’s a bargain basement theme of tough plastics and less than luxurious fabrics. But hey, it comes with the territory, and - coupled to the low price you’re all expecting - the way this thing drives will make all that forgivable, right? Well…yes and no.
The big headline here is weight - the Swift tips the scales at 975kg. That’s 70kg lighter than the old one, despite growing by 50mm in length and 40mm in width. Sounds like Gandalf-spec wizardry is at play here, but it’s thanks in no small part to the all-new platform shaving off a massive 30kg. We have a lighter body in white too, which is far more rigid than before.
All of this translates IRL to a car that’s hilarious fun to chuck around, with a tremendously keen front-end and a mischievous attitude. It’s beautifully balanced, well-damped has just about enough grip and just the right amount of body roll. In these days of super-stiff, super-serious performance cars with fat tyres, the softer Swift Sport and its comparatively skinny 195-section boots is a compelling riposte.
But here’s the thing - when it comes to the way it drives, there are more chinks in this thing’s armour than you’d anticipate. First, let’s take a look a the engine. Gone is the old 1.6-litre naturally-aspirated unit, replaced with a lighter 1.4-litre ‘Boosterjet’ turbo. With 138bhp on tap it’s scarcely more powerful than the outgoing engine, but the key here is torque - the new 169lb ft figure represents a healthy increase of nearly 50 per cent. Sounds like a recipe for boosty fun, but it’s a mediocre unit. It’s hard to find its sweet spot, meaning on a twisty road you either end up leaving it in third gear and make the most of the low and mid-range twist, or ring it out in second. Do the latter, and you’ll inevitably become intimately acquainted with a breathless top end and one of those ‘soft’ rev limiters that makes it feel like the engine’s lost the will to live.
It’s not like I’m unfairly pitting it against the old atmospheric 1.6, either - even compared to other tiny turbo engines out there right now, it doesn’t quite measure up. It’s not hooked up to a particularly good gearbox either. The short, accurate shift of the old car was one of its strongest points, but there’s something disappointingly mushy about how it feels to swap cogs in the new Sport. Oh, and there’s quite a nasty transmission noise to contend with on the overrun. Finally, the steering isn’t as predictable and resolved as you’d like.
Granted, the Fiesta probably won’t have the same standard kit levels (there are no options on the Sport - Suzuki gives you pretty much everything you might want from the off), but the Ford will be far nicer inside, and if the last ST was anything to go by, it’ll be a belter to drive. Suzuki’s £249 a month PCP deal with no deposit sounds tempting enough, but then so is the £3500 down, £139 a month deal you can snag the equally fun and unserious VW Up GTI for. This Swift could do with offering ridiculous value compared to its rivals, but it doesn’t.
On the right road, the Swift Sport is an endearing and hugely entertaining thing despite the less-so-good bits, and for the right price, there’s definitely room in the world for a less serious ‘warm hatch.’
Like I said at the beginning, this is not an expensive car, right? Well, about that: the old one may have been about £14,000, but the standard Swift range as a whole has received a price bump, and that means this new Sport weighs in at £17,999. That’s a rather serious price tag for a not-so-serious car, particularly when pricing for the new Ford Fiesta ST is anticipated to be fairly close to that figure.
Make no mistake: the Sport is a car you really want to love. It’s a car with a heart of gold, and it’s a shame there aren’t more cars around like it. I just wish it was a little more polished, and a lot cheaper.
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
Hyundai i30N: Son, is that you?
no! i am your father
And of course it’s still not available in 4wd
Some would argue that 4wd takes away from driving pleasure
If they were to give all 4 wheels drive it’d almost certainly be AWD and just end up being a glorified front drive car that has to drag around unnecessary and heavy drive components that are rarely required. Besides I don’t think 4 driven wheels would add anything to this car, it would probably just make it more stable and from what most reviewers say the liveliness of the chassis is one of the best things about all 3 generations of the swift sport so why mess with that?
I just can’t think of a good reason why they would give it 4 driven wheels
For it’s weight it’s quite slow. Our a3 cabrio wroghs something like 1.5 tonnes and has a 148bhp 1.4 tfsi, and it’s only 0.5s slower to 60 than the Swift Sport. Obviously can’t compare actual nippiness and driving pleasure
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Oh ffs it’s already dead, this is worse than r/dankmemes in terms of killing “memes” the fastest possible
And this my friends is what people call a “failed” attempt to get a COTW
Memes old go home
Go home, this joke has already been done in another article
I don’t get it
Isn’t the perfect car supposed to be kinda flawed in some way or the other?
Look at Alfa Romeo or The Fiesta ST(the latter had some bad Interior choices, and we know about the former don’t we?)
It’s light, kinda cheap(wait until the used car market), even more cheaper to run and above all its far more cooler than the market . Sure it’s not as powerful, but who cares when you’re smashing through gears at 60mph, isn’t that why we love old Hondas?
I just don’t understand people, you guys want a low powered Light weight hot hatch, and when we get it, you guys complain about the fact that’s it’s too underpowered.
Just be happy we have a Modern Civic Si with Apple car play and sat nav
It’s not kinda cheap, that’s the problem. People would - quite understandably - only want a lightweight, fairly low-powered hatch if the fact that it’s low-powered would actually translate into a price advantage. You wouldn’t want to buy an objectively worse car when it costs the same, would you? With that base price, it’s only 250 pounds (in the UK at least) off the much more powerfull and much sharper Ford Fiesta ST-1.
I mean, 140 bhp is plenty in a car like this, but when there are other, much better, options for about the same price, why bother? The hatchback market is incredibly competitive these days, if you want to market a car as a low-powered, back to basics hatch, then you have to price it as such.
Didn’t once complain about it being underpowered, but it’s too expensive for the performance on offer, particularly considering what it’s like in the cabin. And particularly given the anticipated prices for the new ST…
I’d have to wait to get my hands on one to test drive but the old ones were brilliant, a 2012 one i had the pleasure of having in the driveway for a few weeks kept me honest while making my shenanigans nothing short of heroic looking.
It just felt right, not powerful, not the most neutral, matter of of fact it was a little bit understeery at the limit so you had to lightly load the front to get the tires to grip like you wanted it to. The brake pedal was a glorious thing too, it was pretty much telepathy because i thought of how i wanted to use it and it just did it.
The engine had a pricey remap with a few bits such as intake and a lighter flywheel and stage 1 clutch and the result was nothing short of voodoo. The transmission was perfection for hot hatch territory, so sharp i never had to wonder if i was in gear, just a very short throw and a satisfying clunk later you’re up or down a gear.
My point being is that i will also call foul if all these great factors have been negated and the gimmick is just “ look it’s light and is slightly torqier” because that’s stupid. I could just buy an old one and slap on a remap and take out the heavy seats and go back to being a backroad hero.
What about the mazda 2
So cute
130-ish HP and 169 lbs-ft weighing 975 kg. the thing must be a blast, My car weighs about the same thing and has 90 ish HP and it feels way quicker than it is, I can imagine the Swift being a fun quirky car.
Why does the rear end look like a mixture of a Sandero and a Juke?
really I don’t see it like that
and the Juke is much uglier than this Swift
I wish suzuki would come back to the US.
same