Suzuki Swift: a top contender

You will notice on these pages that I like small cars with a sporty edge. Actually, thanks to my wife make that small automatic cars, due to her abhorrence of changing gear manually. That created a dilemma, as you can count the number of small, sporty, automatic and inexpensive cars on one finger. Come to think of it, not even one finger, as to be honest there isn't a single car that fits the bill. You can buy a car that will meet three out of four criteria - no problems at all - but a car that meets all four requirements?... forget it. Here are some examples:

• Toyota Yaris: inexpensive, small, automatic, but not sporty
• Ford Fiesta XR4/ST: inexpensive, small, sporty, but no automatic
• Volkswagen Polo GTI: inexpensive, small, sporty, but no automatic
• Suzuki Swift Sport: inexpensive, small, sporty, but no automatic
• Mazda 3 SP23: meh. Didn't like it.
  
• Honda Civic Sport: inexpensive (ish - sort of), sporty, automatic, but not small (when did Civic's grow an extra size??). Actually, we took one for a test drive- more on this later.

Out of desperation, we decided to take a standard Suzuki Swift 'S' for a test drive. I wanted so much to like this car- after all it looks great, is cheap as chips, and meets all of our requirements except for one: sportiness. Still, no harm in taking a Swift for a quick spin to see for myself whether it's 74kW and 133Nm would be enough to make it a fun drive. And the answer is: almost, but not quite. The car is indeed fun to drive, being so light and easy to manoeuvre. The gated automatic is also not bad, allowing the driver to change up and down through its four gears. But the Swift just lacks the power to be really exciting. It would be fine as a run-about, and I'm sure the manual version would be a real laugh, but the automatic needs a much more powerful engine to give the Swift the level of performance that I was searching for. Sure, the Swift Sport is probably just about perfect with its 92kW and 148Nm, but forget about an automatic version ever making its way to Australia.

Still, I hadn't given up on the Swift. Driven (haha) by my enthusiasm for the looks and handling of the Swift, not to mention it's rock-bottom price, I investigated after-market solutions to the power deficit. That's when I stumbled across the Zage Swift Turbo Kit, which promised to double the Swift's power to 130kW for around AU$3000. Now that sounds like fun! Finding a distributor, I made enquiries and discovered that the kits were quite new to Australia, and I had the distinct impression that I might end up being a guinea-pig for the installation. In addition, a badly-translated Cantonese review of the kit specifically mentioned the turbo's dramatic on/off nature, and I started having visions of the turbo coming on-boost half way around a corner while driving in the wet. I got scared. In theory, an automatic Suzuki Swift with some nice wheels, custom intake and exhaust, and Zage turbo kit would be an awesome car. But to my conservative-mind the risks outweighed the benefits. On the plus side, if the Swift had proved to be perfect for us, then we wouldn't have ended up with a Golf GTI instead! :)