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.
There are no EuroNCAP test results yet, but the Swift is clearly designed to score well, including in the pedestrian impact test with that high, rounded nose. Suzuki's predictions are four stars for the impact tests and three stars each for pedestrian and child safety. Side and curtain airbags are standard in all UK-market Swifts, and the outer rear seats have Isofix child-seat mountings. ABS and electronic brake-force distribution are standard, as in nearly all new cars, and the doors have deadlocks. The GLX's keyless entry and starting system makes it harder to steal; like a Nissan Micra's similar system, it has a rotary knob where the ignition switch would otherwise be. It beeps infuriatingly when the ignition is off and the 'key' is still inside the cabin, something which the UK importer could consider changing.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Suzuki Swift
wrote on 06 06 2007