Suzuki Swift Sport long-term review

Mileage: 4497

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It didn’t get to tackle the hill, but our Swift still impressed on its Goodwood excursion - 1st August 2018

Given its predecessor’s well-earned reputation as a hot supermini that flew under many buyers’ radars, there was plenty of interest from Autocar’s staffers in a stint behind the wheel of the Swift Sport.

Somehow, I made it to the front of the queue and have been responsible for a significant portion of our car’s 4053 covered miles. A lot of that distance was spent in stop-start traffic on my cross-London commute, which revealed little, other than a gearshift that wasn’t as precise or satisfying as I’d like. Considering the responsive steering and an eagerness to surge forward at every set of traffic lights with even mild encouragement from my right foot, the vagueness of the six-speed ’box felt a bit out of place.

To experience the Sport as intended, I made sure the journey to this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed used a more engaging route – and the Swift didn’t disappoint. There’s more than enough grunt from the 1.4-litre engine to entertain without having to eke out every last rev between shifts as you race through the gears.

It was how the power is delivered that impressed me the most, the turbocharger providing a welcome punch of mid-range torque to propel the Sport forward in whichever direction I pointed it. The thing is, this is the kind of car that feels equally rewarding at a slower pace.

Whereas a more potent hot hatch reveals only a portion of its potential at road-legal speeds, I didn’t need to be on the limit for the Swift to impress. Although the steering might be unnaturally heavy for something only a little larger than a supermarket shopping trolley, the Sport still comes alive in the bends. There’s enough grip to let you carry momentum through corners at a pace that larger, heavier hot hatches would struggle to match and the engine is peppy enough to propel you out the other side.

When I arrived at the Festival of Speed, Goodwood’s usually luscious green surroundings had turned an arid yellow on account of July’s heatwave, so naturally the Champion Yellow Swift looked right at home. The car parks might have been filled with more expensive metal, but the aggressive styling and impossible-to-ignore paintwork still drew plenty of attention – even once it was caked with four days of accumulated grime from the campsite-turned-dustbowl.

The Sport’s fuel economy resolutely refused to dip below 40mpg, no matter how hard I pushed it, which made that particular part of the digital instrument cluster a bit redundant. Happily, it can be switched out for a pair of grin-inducing bar graphs showing how much power and torque you’re wringing out of the engine at any moment, or how much boost the turbocharger is producing.

This is, of course, the first Swift Sport to use forced induction – and, dials aside, I get the impression it’s a bit embarrassed to admit as much, with little in the way of aural feedback. A part of me wishes Suzuki had added some turbine whistle to truly embrace the turbo. That would have livened up an otherwise plain-sounding engine note.

The induction whoosh and venomous rumble of our recently departed long-term Hyundai i30 N left a much more positive impression when I borrowed it for a few days, even if it is artificially piped into the cabin. On the other hand, a rorty blow-off valve would probably be a step too far for the Swift, which felt equally comfortable being used as a daily driver as it did on the limit.

It was only the final part of my journey home after the Festival, on a truly terrible piece of northbound M25, that I wished the Swift had a slightly softer, more pliant ride. The Sport’s seats might be comfortable for long-distance drives, but not when the suspension is trying (and failing) to soak up the Tarmac equivalent of a Toblerone bar.

Tom morgan

Love it:

CRUISING ALONG There’s no shortage of tech inside the cabin and adaptive cruise control is a highlight, making motorway journeys a breeze.

Loathe it:

AMBIGUOUS ESTIMATES Estimated fuel economy might be optimistic, but the indicated remaining range quickly tumbles once you drop below half a tank.

Mileage: 4053

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Life with a Suzuki Swift Sport: Month 2

Solving a button mystery - 4th July 2018

The Swift Sport’s boot has two buttons on. As you’d expect, one opens the boot. The purpose of the other was a mystery to us for some time. (Yes, we could have looked in the manual, but where’s the fun in that?) Until, almost by accident, I discovered it locks the car. Genius: grab stuff from the boot, shut it and lock the car, with no need to dig out the keys from your pocket.

Mileage: 3567

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Now, where did we park the car? If only there were an easy way to spot it. Oh, wait… - 20th June 2018

There are plenty of things to talk about regarding our Suzuki Swift Sport. How it drives, how it rides, what the engine’s like – that sort of thing. You know, the stuff that actually matters when considering the experience of driving one of the new kids on the hot hatch block.

And yet all pretty much everyone who has seen our Swift Sport wants to talk to me about is something that is entirely superficial: the colour.

Now, a car’s paint job shouldn’t really matter, yet it is what everyone asks about. So, by popular demand, let’s start there. In the brochure, it’s described as Champion Yellow. In the real world, it has been variously described to me as ‘bright’, ‘vivid’, ‘distinctive’, ‘lurid’ and, erm, ‘wow’.

Someone who works elsewhere in the media empire that publishes Autocar and who followed me into our ultra-glamorous multistorey car park the other day said she was relieved to find out I hadn’t paid out my own cash for it, because she would have worried for anyone who had chosen that shade of yellow.

Before I collected our Swift Sport, Champion Yellow wouldn’t have been my choice, were I buying one. I’m not a showy or flashy person by nature and I’d probably have plumped for one of the five other somewhat less ‘vibrant’ options. But the thing is… the yellow has grown on me. Quite a lot.

For a start, I’m spending a lot less time wandering around car parks trying to find it. This was illustrated recently when, after a flight delay, I trudged into one of Heathrow’s big parking lots at just gone midnight, tiredness causing me to forget exactly where I’d parked. I soon found it.

It’s also harder for drivers of cars that cut me up at junctions to do that ‘oh, sorry, didn’t see you’ wave as they sweep across my brow. Yes, you saw me. I know you did.

But, mostly, the Champion Yellow paint job has grown on me because it’s well suited to the Swift Sport’s character: bright, breezy, fun and not too serious. The bright hue shows up the Sport’s bodywork tweaks over the regular Swift, and because this colour isn’t an option on the standard car, it means there’s little doubt I’m driving a hot hatch, not a city runabout.

In my short time with the Swift Sport so far, I’ve revelled in its relative simplicity. Many modern hot hatches can be rewarding and engaging to drive but, as with some modern smartphones and the like, they can be quite tedious to set up. Having to wade through various drive mode options and fiddle with settings before you can really enjoy driving a hot hatch can detract from the experience.

The Swift Sport, though, doesn’t have any drive modes. It’s not that sort of hot hatch. Instead, it’s straight to the point: zippy to drive, sharp to respond. That was made clear by my first experience of the car – a road trip from Dublin to Twickenham, you may recall – but the real benefit of that has shown itself now I’m using the Swift Sport largely for my daily urban commute.

It isn’t so concerned with being ‘hot’ that it’s overly stiff and uncomfortable on such roads. It’s not as pliant in soaking up bumps as a regular Swift, but it doesn’t feel that daily usage has been compromised to make it perform on flowing roads. In that sense, it’s just like the Champion Yellow paint job: it might not be a colour you’d choose for your everyday motor, but it doesn’t take long to adjust to it. Besides, I’ll leave the last word to my five-year-old nephew.

When I showed him the Swift Sport for the first time, his eyes lit up, and he pronounced it “super-cool”. That’s good enough for me.

Love it:

TORQUE ABOUT IT The turbocharged 1.4-litre petrol engine gives the Swift Sport plenty of pep when you need it, without ever being brutal.

Loathe it:

SLOW SAT-NAV START-UP It takes an age to lock in its location when you first turn the car on, which is at odds with a car that’s otherwise so quick to get started in.

Mileage: 2483

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Not quite range anxiety, but the Swift lacks fuel capacity - 13th June 2018

As with standard versions, the Swift Sport has a 37-litre fuel tank – but it seems smaller. The regular Swift’s mild-hybrid-boosted engines give you a decent fuel range, but the bigger, 1.4-litre turbo in the Swift Sport requires frequent fill-ups. Thankfully, though, the 300 or so miles of driving you get between stops are proving very enjoyable.

Mileage: 2427

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Life with a Suzuki Swift Sport: Month 1

Welcoming the Swift Sport to the fleet - 30 May 2018

Turns out that patience isn’t always a virtue. Or, to subvert another cliché, sometimes good things come to those who don’t wait. And proof of that, currently parked outside Autocar Towers, is small, fun and very, very yellow.

That’d be our new Suzuki Swift Sport, then. We’ve been asking (well, pestering) Suzuki for one for our test fleet since our first, brief taste of the hot hatch in Japan last year. Eventually, and possibly just to keep us quiet, Suzuki offered to deliver one to us near the end of May. But they also casually mentioned that, if we fancied getting one nearly a month earlier, we could.

The catch: we’d have to pick it up from an event they were running - in Dublin. So we’d have to fly to Dublin, collect the Swift Sport, catch a ferry to Holyhead and then drive the 300 or so miles back to Autocar’s Twickenham base.

Catch? That’s not a catch. More like a kid being told they can have their Christmas present early and then given the chance to play with it for hours. After all, what better way to learn about a new car than with an extended road trip spanning urban driving, motorway mileage and, via a short but brilliant detour, some of the finest driving roads in Wales?

As an aside, our lack of patience wasn’t even tested when it came to speccing the Swift Sport: there aren’t any options to consider. Every car gets a six-speed manual ’box, specially tuned exhaust, LED headlights, 17in alloys and the distinctive Sport body kit. Inside, there’s air-conditioning, a leather steering wheel, a colour touchscreen and driver assistance systems such as forward detection, lane departure correction and adaptive cruise control.

Our only choice concerned the colour. We went for Champion Yellow, largely because I have fond memories of similarly hued Ignis and Swift Sport rally cars from a decade ago.

The opportunity to do such varied mileage is a key part of the reason we wanted the Swift Sport on our fleet. Previous versions have quietly become cult favourite hot hatches, because they were simple, small, fuss-free and fun. Or, as we described it in our review, a “pleasingly old-fashioned little bundle of joy”.

Success creates expectation – and so our hopes for this new Swift Sport have duly been raised. In addition, Suzuki hasn’t simply updated its hot hatch with a new look and minor tweaks: there are some substantive changes under the bonnet.

Suzuki has replaced the peppy 134bhp 1.6-litre naturally aspirated engine from the old Swift Sport with a 138bhp 1.4-litre turbocharged motor. That means the car has more torque – 170lb ft compared with 110lb ft – but, according to our first drive recently, perhaps a bit less character.

That first review did highlight some cause for concern, as reflected by its three-star score. While our testers still judged the Swift Sport “a fine little driver’s car”, there were furrowed brows over the price: it’s been hiked to £17,999 (albeit discounted to £16,499 until the end of June 2018). Now that’s expectation raising – it’s four grand more than a Volkswagen Up GTI, for starters.

Still, like any kid unwrapping a shiny new toy, I wasn’t really thinking about the price when I collected the keys at Dublin Airport. All I wanted to do was try it out. With not enough time before the ferry to find some fun Irish roads, I settled for a trip to Phoenix Park, largely so I could drive a bit of the classic street circuit (albeit very slowly).

That seemed a great idea, until it was time to head to the ferry terminal. The two were only split by six or so miles – except it was six miles right through the centre of Dublin, in ridiculously heavy traffic. That wasn’t good for my nerves but was a useful test of the Swift Sport’s abilities in stop-start urban driving.

Unlike some hardcore hot hatches, and without the use of any drive modes, the Swift Sport is capable of doing a more than passable impression of a non-sporting Swift, which helped ease my attempts to manoeuvre my way out of near-gridlocked traffic on a succession of bumpy back streets.

Next stage of #OperationSwiftSport: the appropriately named Dublin Swift ferry. Next stop: Holyhead... pic.twitter.com/bOTaLzFE2F

— James Attwood (@Atters_J) 4 May 2018

Having made it to the ferry terminal in the nick of time, the jaunt across the Irish Sea was a chance to relieve the stress of city driving and mentally prepare to exploit our new Swift in full Sport guise on my planned route from Anglesey to an overnight halt in Shrewsbury.

The trip proved that although the Swift Sport might have grown up and become a little more serious, it’s still capable of entertaining with a responsive, reactive and just plain fun drive. As first impressions go, it was hugely positive and it’s whetted my appetite for more time with the Swift Sport on some of the UK’s finer flowing A and B-roads.

It’s worth noting that it didn’t disgrace itself the following day, when the final part of the journey took in the motorways of Britain, when I set off from Shrewsbury to Twickenham with a mild detour via Bristol (it made sense at the time).

Brizzle. #OperationSwiftSport pic.twitter.com/HVdY1dD4ZD

— James Attwood (@Atters_J) 6 May 2018

I arrived back at Autocar HQ after a long weekend of getting to know the Swift Sport keen to spend more time in it. One first impression: it remains good, simple fun, yet is also a hot hatch that should settle in nicely as a daily driver. Of course, it’s always fun being allowed to open your presents early.

The question will be whether they’ll still feel shiny and exciting a few months down the road. At some point, too, the question of value will come into play and we’ll have to consider that £17,999 price – and the similarly priced elephant in the room that is the new Ford Fiesta ST.

Still, that’s for the months ahead. Right now, I’m after an excuse for another Swift Sport road trip.

Second opinion

Past Swift Sports have, in my opinion, offered as much pep and performance as you need to drive spiritedly but safely on Britain’s roads. The balance between everyday usability and sports tuning has always seemed spot on and the early signs are this latest version gets it right too.