Category: Superminis 
Price Range: £8,995 to £12,250
Fun quotient is high, neat interior design, handles and rides well, very good value, lively and civilised diesel version.
Lots of hard cabin plastics, desperately unimaginative trim-level designations, 1.5-litre petrol engine lacks punch, has an uncertain throttle response and is jerky in traffic.
Suzuki goes for the mainstream and succeeds, but it's best as a diesel.
From £7750 to £9000 approx. On sale April.
First impressions are good. Tight gaps, smooth alignment of neighbouring body and cabin components, a muted sheen on the interior plastics, it's all favourable stuff. You then discover that all the interior plastics have a hard surface, but this has become the norm in today's superminis (no matter that even a base-model Peugeot 106 had fully-padded doors) so it's unfair to criticise. As a Japanese car in conception if not in manufacture (there are many European-sourced components), the Suzuki is very likely to prove reliable and mechanically durable.
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wrote on 06 06 2007