Suzuki Jimny vs Fiat 500X

What's the difference?

The Suzuki Jimny XL is still very much a Jimny, just stretched.

It’s pretty ordinary on-road, it’s on the wrong side of small – especially in terms of its cargo-carrying ability – and it’s still an exercise in driver-adaptability because it’s so basic, bouncy and requires so much effort to keep it driving in a straight line. 

But if you’re willing to fully embrace the fun and cop a few of those compromises along the way, you won’t be disappointed. 

The 500X is a fun-looking alternative to the various options available from everyone else and is - overall - better to drive than its Renegade twin. 

It packs a very good safety package which you can't ignore but does lose points on the warranty and servicing regime. But it's also built to take four adults in comfort, which not every car in the segment can boast.

The standard Suzuki Jimny is 3965mm long, 1645mm wide, 1725mm high and has a kerb weight of 1185kg.

The Jimny XL is 340mm longer than the three-door Jimny (so it’s 3985mm from end to end if you need help with your maths) and its wheelbase is 2590mm (up from 2250mm), but it remains the same width and height, 1645mm and 1720mm, respectively, as the three-door Jimny.

In terms of appearance, it looks like what it is: a stretched and heavier Jimny with a couple of extra doors. It retains that distinctive retro-cool boxy shape of its smaller stablemate.

The interior is seemingly a homage to the basic but functional cabins of 4WDs of yesteryear.

Look, I like the 500X, but I know why people don't. It's clearly a 500X in the way a Mini Countryman is a Mini. It looks like a 500, but get closer and you see the difference. It's chubby like a $10 weekend market Bhudda statue and has great big googly eyes like Mr Magoo. I find this endearing, my wife does not. The looks aren't the only thing she doesn't like.

The cabin is a bit more restrained and I quite like the band of colour stretching across the dash. The 500X is meant to be a bit more grown up than the 500, so there's a proper dash, more sensible design choices but it still has the big buttons, perfect for the meaty fingers of people who won't be buying this car.

The Jimny interior is basic but comfortable, erring on the side of practical rather than anything that could ever be accused of being posh. And that spartan approach gels with the Jimny’s off-road orientation.

The cabin of the XL is the same as the smaller Jimny’s – cloth seats, hard, durable plastics – and it all feels as if you could hose it out if you got the urge, although I wouldn’t recommend that, of course.

Everything, including the controls, is really practical. The buttons and dials are big so you can find them and operate them even during particularly bouncy 4WDing.

The cabin is simply a very usable and user-friendly space. 

One of the more important things to note in the XL is the fact that it is longer. There is a bit more room inside the cabin, in general, with plenty of head, shoulder and legroom in the two-seater rear pew.

In other good news, you get a tiny bit more space in the rear cargo area than you would in the three-door Jimny. Not a whole lot, but enough to give you some more flexibility in terms of what, and how much, you can pack back there.

With the second-row seats in use, boot space is listed as 211L. With the second row stowed away, there’s a claimed 332L of cargo space.

At just 4.25 metres, the 500X isn't big, but makes the most of what it's got. The boot impresses at 350 litres and with the seats down, I think you could reasonably expect to triple that figure, though Fiat doesn't have an official number that I can find. For added Italian feel, you can tip the passenger seat forward to get really long things in, like a Billy bookshelf flat pack from Ikea.

Rear seat passengers sit high and upright meaning leg and kneeroom are maximised and with that tall roof, you won't scrape your head. 

The doors each have a small bottle holder for a total of four and Fiat has got serious about cupholders - the 500X now has four.

I drove the Pop Star, which is the second of the now-two model "regular" range, the other being the, er, Pop. I drove a Special Edition in 2018 and it's not clear if it is Special as there's also an Amalfi Special edition. Anyway.

The $30,990 (plus on-road costs) Pop Star has 17-inch alloys, six-speaker Beats-branded stereo, dual-zone climate control, reversing camera, keyless entry and start, active cruise control, sat nav, auto headlights and wipers, leather shifter and steering wheel and a space-saver spare.

The Beats-branded stereo speakers are supplied with noise from FCA's UConnect on a 7.0-inch touchscreen. The same system is in a Maserati, don't you know. Offering Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, UConnect loses points by shrinking the Apple interface into a lurid red frame. Android Auto properly fills the screen, for some reason which is ironic given Apple owns the Beats brand.

The five-door Jimny has the same 1.5-litre four-cylinder petrol engine as the three-door – and that produces 75kW at 6000rpm and 130Nm at 4000rpm.

The Jimny punts along simply because it is so small and light, even in XL form, but the engine is a little bit wheezy for this bigger Jimny.

It has a part-time four-wheel drive system with high- and low-range and off-road traction control.

Fiat's rather excellent 1.4-litre turbo MultiAir does duty under the stubby bonnet, making 103kW and 230Nm. Rather less excellent is the six-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission, which sends power through the front wheels only.

It's rated to tow a 1200kg braked trailer and 600kg unbraked.

The Suzuki Jimny has an official combined cycle fuel consumption figure of 6.4L/100km.

I recorded 11.6L/100km on this test which seems a bit steep but, as always, I did a lot of high- and low-range 4WDing and, as mentioned earlier, I did have to sink the right boot in quite often to maintain momentum to get through the more challenging sections of terrain.

The five-door Jimny has a 40L fuel tank, so, going by my fuel figures, a full tank should give you a driving range of about 345km.

However, if you use the official fuel figures in your calculation, a full tank should give you a driving range of about 625km.

Fiat rather optimistically suggest you'll get a combined cycle figure of 5.7L/100km but try as I might, I couldn't do better than 11.2L/100km. What's worse, it demands 98RON fuel, so it's not the cheapest car to run. This figure us consistent with past weeks in the 500X and no, I wasn't thrashing it.

The Jimny XL, though longer, and heavier than the three-door Jimny, is still so small, light and nimble that those characteristics are a help and a hindrance.

A help because the XL is easy to steer anywhere – city streets, shopping centre car parks and suburbia. And more importantly, it’s one of the easiest 4WDs to manoeuvre into a parking spot.

A hindrance because it is so small and light that it takes countless minor steering corrections while driving to keep the XL steering in a straight line. And that can be very tiring. 

It’s also easily unsettled by irregular surfaces, strong wind and large passing trucks.

You’d think because the XL is 90kg heavier than the three-door Jimny it wouldn’t exhibit those characteristics quite so much, but while it’s marginally better at managing all of those challenges than the standard Jimny, it’s by small increments.

The Jimny XL feels underpowered and vulnerable, especially on highways. Hit 100km/h or so and it feels like the Zook shouldn’t be pushed any harder.

Ride is firm and jittery via a light narrow body on a ladder-frame chassis and coil springs.

However, the Jimny is fun and highly manoeuvrable off-road. Not because of any mechanical or off-road traction control systems, but because it's so small and light.

The Jimny has part-time 4WD (with high- and low-range 4WD) and an 'AllGrip Pro' system of driver-assist tech that includes hill descent control, hill hold assist and more – all adequate in terms of performance.

This is a real 4WD with a full ladder-frame chassis and rigid axles front and rear. It exists in a vehicular realm occupied by other purpose-built 4WDs such as the Ford Ranger Raptor, Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, Toyota LandCruiser 70 Series and Land Rover Defender.

And because of its size, offering up plenty of visibility and with a wheel at each corner, the Jimny is, as mentioned, very easy to steer through rough terrain, because the driver knows exactly where the tyres are at any time.

The Jimny XL has decent off-road angles. Approach is listed as 36 degrees, departure is 47, ramp-over is 24, but this 4WD is not as naturally suited to off-roading as the three-door.

Ground clearance is 211mm and wading depth is unlisted but likely around 300mm.

In 4WD 'High' or 'Low', the Jimny simply keeps on trucking through rough terrain. It doesn't have a diff lock, but because it's so small and light it still manages quite nicely without one.

You have to use plenty of throttle, keeping the revs up and wheels spinning in order to get the most out of that traction control, but that's part of the fun.

However, for the exact reasons it is such a lively drive on-road and such an engaging drive off-road, the Jimny faces a few substantial challenges on tough terrain.

This 4WD demands its driver be fully dialled-into the experience, fully committed, and, while that’s a characteristic I really like, it will exhaust some people.

The Jimny requires constant micromanagement of the steering, transmission and the vehicle itself simply to keep it on track. And that can quickly become tiring, especially if you're not used to it. 

Because it's so small and light, the Jimny can be unsettled by corrugations, shallow and deep, skipping around lightly as it attempts to maintain traction and momentum.

Also, while low-range 4WDing, any dramatic changes in the terrain or driving conditions – an abrupt wheel drop into a deep rut, or a shift in onboard load, or a wind gust while driving up a rocky hill – can create instantly tricky, even serious, issues for the Jimny to overcome.

As always, standard tyres (Bridgestone Dueler H/L 195/80 R15) are fine for sealed surfaces and some light-duty off-roading but if you’re planning to drive on anything more than well-maintained formed trails then invest in a set of decent all-terrains.

It has a full-sized spare wheel mounted on the rear door.

On a minor niggling note, there's a lot of in-cabin noise on any track surface, and a noticeable transmission whine.

In terms of weights and practicality for packing, gross vehicle mass (GVM) is listed as 1545kg, 110kg more than the three-door Jimny . But the vehicle weighs 90kg more than the three-door, so there’s that…

Payload is listed as 360kg. Towing capacity is 350kg (unbraked) and 1300kg (braked).

Again, I shouldn't like the 500X but I really don't mind it. It's flawed, which might be why.

The dual-clutch transmission is dumber than a box of loose cogs, lurching from start and looking the other way when you expect it to shift. We know the engine is a good one and I think part of the reason it's so thirsty is the confused way the transmission goes about its business. I'd love to drive a manual to see what it's like.

The 500X initially feels worse than its Jeep Renegade sibling-under-the-skin, which is quite an achievement. Part of that is to do with the ride, which is very choppy below 60km/h. The first 500X I drove wallowed about but this one is a bit tauter, which would be good if you weren't punished with this bounciness.

The seats themselves comfortable and the interior is a good place to hang out. It's reasonably quiet, too, which is at odds with the old-school silliness of its conduct. It feels like Labrador let out of after day kept inside.

And that's where the car I shouldn't like is a car I do like - I really like that it feels like you're on Roman cobblestones, the type that make your knees hurt when you walk on them for a day. The steering wheel is too fat and is at a weird angle, but you kind of square up to it and drive the car like your life depends on it. You have to take it by the scruff, correct the shifts with the paddles and show it who's boss.

Obviously, that's not for everyone. If you drive it really gently, it's a very different experience, but that means going slowly everywhere, which is no fun at all and not at all Italian.

Out of the box, you get seven airbags, ABS, stability and traction controls, forward collision warning, high and low speed AEB, active cruise control, rollover stability, lane departure warning, lane keep assist, blind spot sensor and rear cross traffic alert. That's not bad for a $30,000 car full stop, let alone a Fiat.

There are two ISOFIX points and three top-tether anchors for baby seats. 

The 500X scored a five-star ANCAP rating in December 2016.

The Suzuki Jimny has a five-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty.

Servicing is scheduled for every 12 months/15,000km.

Over five years you'll be in for a high of $589 and a low of $349 for an annual service, the average being $453 per service over that period. Not outrageous, but not exactly cheap.

Fiat offers a three-year/150,000km warranty, along with roadside assist for the same period. It's not great as more manufacturers shift to five years. 

Service intervals arrive once a year or 15,000km. There is no fixed or capped-price servicing program for the 500X.