Suzuki Swift Sport 2007 review

The original Suzuki Swift GTi, sold here in the mid-'80s, was a budget-priced bucket of bolts attached to one of the sweetest, micro-sized, twin-cam, multi-valve engines this side of a Suzuki motorbike.

You don't see too many of those old GTi Suzies around these days; many were spontaneously added to roadside shrubbery when the engine proved too much for the rest of the car to cope.

Still, it was a loveable little rogue of a thing, despite wrist-snapping torque steer and wet-weather handling that left drivers ashen-faced and trembling, as though they'd just been shot (or seen The Catch-Up).

Maybe “despite” is the wrong word. The adventurous thrilled in numbers to the GTi's mix of dash and destructiveness, making it an unlikely cult machine. Of surviving GTis, possibly only one or two remain unmodified; such is the fate of the cult car.

Twenty years on, Suzuki has incorporated the GTi's DNA into its latest bargain hatchback, the Swift Sport.

This isn't as simple as you'd expect. Modern designers face unusual design challenges: the technology exists to make even budget-level cars completely smooth and refined, which sometimes — especially in the case of sporty runabouts — isn't what you want.

So some reverse engineering is needed: winding back sophistication to a point where the fun kicks in.

The harder you drive the Sport, the more you notice its ancestor's kookiness creeping to the surface.

There's barely any torque steer, but enough power is communicated through the wheel to give you at least an idea of something raucous happening up front — without any particular danger that you'll be incorporated into a tree, or oncoming traffic.

In fact, given the test car's nuclear yellow paint, there was more danger of blinding oncoming drivers than hitting them. This paint could be seen through walls. It was like driving a glowstick.

Forget wet-weather trauma, too — although probably more credit should go to the Suzuki's gluey Dunlops than to its suspension engineers.

(By the way, when did tyres become so good? These Dunlops are exceptional, but almost all new tyres are capable of grip levels higher than most competent drivers can exceed. Even those cheap Taiwanese brands with names like Myong Tsing and Tong Foon Speed Monkey Radial aren't entirely dreadful. Someone should re-introduce crossplies, just for nostalgia's sake and to keep the population down.)

As with any car so over-tyred, handling in the dry is foolproof. Hit a corner too quickly, and it's no great problem to scrub off speed and change lines.

Interestingly, the Sport seems set up to oversteer slightly at exit from medium-quick curves. This is so rare among front-drive hatches as to be almost unique.

Suzuki evidently has a playful bunch in its suspension-geometry lab. Hey, for all we know the same guys may be responsible for that hyper-cute exterior.

Some gambles have been taken here, but it hangs together well across what is a surprising amount of surface area for such a compact unit.

Two things about the Suzuki's interior: it offers enough headroom to wear a top hat, should you be so inclined, and features front seats that, by happy accident, are perfectly sculpted for a certain 42-year-old reviewer's dodgy back.

Seriously — and it's purely by coincidence — those seats were perfect. A certain reviewer was tempted to remove them for use in his office.

A certain reviewer may even have idly sorted through his tools in search of the correct-size spanners for the job before a certain reviewer considered his bail conditions and woke up to himself.

The engine — 1.6 litres, four variably timed valves per cylinder, all the usual tricks — is slightly undersquare (greater stroke than bore) which should provide a little more torque than seems available.

No big deal; the engine's sound makes up for that. Suzuki must have had its sonic technicians working harder than Israeli airport security to come up with a note so zesty.

For only $24,000, ridiculous value is represented here. It's only after a few days of driving that tiny quality differences between the Sport and its more expensive Mazda and Honda competitors become obvious.

They're only small matters — a slightly buzzier reverse gear, for one — and nothing that would be a deal-breaker.

Of course, for some drivers wanting to reconnect with some GTi rawness, that buzzy reverse might well be a feature, not a bug.