2017 Suzuki Swift vs Honda Jazz

What's the difference?

Cheap and cheerful, sure, but how cheap or how cheerful depends on which trim level you opt for. For ours, the GL Navigator Safety Pack is the pick here, offering a strong mix of technology and safety equipment without breaking the budget.

The MY18 Jazz was a pleasant surprise. There was little wrong with the previous edition and, truth be told, I'd have probably thought a manual one of those was good fun, too. The surprising spec inclusions are most welcome - those LED headlights kick the dark's butt - but really, it's a car that can carry four grown-ups and/or weird cargo in genuine comfort. Nothing else in the class can manage that.

It's gone a little cutesy, this new Swift, which does retain a fairly obvious family resemblance with the cars of old, just with some of harder edges rounded out.

The bonnet and grille have been smoothed over and widened, while the rear now looks a little more bulging in places, a little less sharp, than the old car. Hidden rear door handles, a tiny rear lip spoiler and some clever uses of black on the body all add a sense of style to the little Swift.

Inside, you can never truly forget you’re sitting in a cheap(ish) car - even in the more expensive models - where hard plastics line the doors and dash, though there are some nifty design elements to break up interior styling, especially in everything but the base model, where the black-framed touchscreen lifts the ambience in the cabin.

The Jazz has, happily, evolved its design over the years. At first it was like a mini Rice Bubble-era Toyota Tarago and today it's still very much a mini Rice Bubble-era Tarago, but now it's slightly bigger. 

Honda's quirky design bods were in a strange mood around the time of this generation's conception and while the front end is fairly tame and contemporary - if a bit bulgy - the side view is characterised by a deep gash in the side of the car that runs to the taillights and then hooks down, leaving a space where you could snap a hockey stick into the side for storage. It calms down again at the back, with tall stacked tail-lights and a broad tailgate.

Inside, things are fairly tame, with dark grey plastics that are lifted by brushed aluminium-look trim around the dashboard-mounted air vents. It's not bang up to date like the HR-V, Civic and new CR-V, but it's perfectly inoffensive. In fact, it feels like a more expensive car, although that is getting harder to say these days - the Mazda2 has is a pretty plush interior for similar money while both are miles ahead of the Hyundai Accent.

Every Swift model measures 3.8m long, 1.7m wide and 1.5m high, and while it’s a small car, clever packaging helps squeeze maximum practicality from it.

Front seat riders share two cupholders between them, which sit below a nifty-looking media centre that houses the power source and USB connection points, plus there’s room for bottles in the door pockets.

Climb into the back, and space is actually pretty good (well, head and legroom, at least. Things are still going to be tight if you choose to go three up in the back) but there’s not much else to crow about, save a single cupholder and room for a single bottle in each door.

Boot space is a listed at 242 litres, swelling to 947 litres should you drop the 60/40 split folding rear seat.

The space inside the Jazz is extraordinary for such a small car. Back-seat passengers in its immediate competition - Mazda2 and Hyundai Accent - could only dream of the kind of legroom enjoyed in the Honda. Behind my driving position there's still tonnes of room, and I'm just shy of 180cm.

As ever, the interior is full of clever details, packed into a small space. The centre console holds two cupholders, a tray for your phone and a compartmentalised open tray reachable by both front and rear seat passengers. A third cupholder folds out of the dash on the driver's side. The back seat doesn't have any cupholders, unfortunately, and nor is there a centre armrest.

The Jazz is the home of the Magic Seats. The rears are split 60/40 and flop forward to create a near-flat load space. Pull them back up and you can fold the seat squabs up, clearing the way for items you'd rather not rattle around in the boot or that need that extra headroom (say, a tall plant or a flat pack that won't lie... flat. Or a dog). They're very clever and nobody else has them.

Boot space is impressive for a small car at 354 litres. Folding the seats yields a jump to 1314 litres. Enormous. By comparison the 2 is a titchy 250 litres and the rather bigger (and older and less capable, etc) Accent just shades it at 370 litres seats-up.

The basic car in the three-tier range is the VTi. If you're happy to change gears yourself, you can get your backside into a Jazz for just $14,990. There aren't many cars cheaper than that, and there are fewer still that are worth buying, and none that come with solid, Honda engineering.

The modest specification includes 15-inch alloy wheels, cruise control,  a four-speaker stereo with Bluetooth and USB, air-conditioning, power windows and mirrors, reversing camera, remote central locking, LED headlights, rear parking sensors with dash display and a space-saver spare.

You can see a couple of surprise and delight features there - LED headlights at this level are practically unheard of.

The four-speaker stereo is tinny but otherwise fine. The small touchscreen is reasonably snappy but the underlying software is a bit of a lame duck - it looks really old. Much like its compatriots at Toyota, Honda's head unit looks like an off-the-shelf job, with the USB port hidden under an ugly cover. It's a bit low-rent in an otherwise excellent cabin.

You get what you pay for here, with the GL, GL Navigator and GL Navigator with Safety Pack all sharing the same 1.2-litre petrol engine, while the most expensive GLX Turbo scores a smaller-but-smarter turbocharged 1.0-litre unit.

The 1.2-litre petrol engine is a four-cylinder number that will produce 66kW at 6000rpm and 120Nm at 4400rpm. It’s paired with a five-speed manual in only the entry-level Swift, and a CVT auto in the GL Navigator and Safety Pack models.

Your other option, though, is Suzuki’s popular three-cylinder 'Boosterjet' engine, a tiny turbocharged unit that will produce 82kW at 5500rpm and 160Nm at 1500rpm. It pairs with a different automatic transmission, ditching the CVT in favour of a six-speed torque converter.

Under the diving bonnet is Honda's 1.5-litre single-cam four cylinder producing 88kW and 145Nm. Weighing just 1095kg, those numbers aren't bad at all. The five-speed manual feeds the power to the front wheels.

The 1.2-litre unit is claimed to consume 4.6L/100km on the combined fuel economy cycle in manual guise, with that number climbing to 4.8L/100km with the CVT. Emissions of CO2 are a claimed 106g/km (manual) and 110g/km (automatic).

The Boosterjet engine is actually the thirstier choice, sipping a claimed 5.1L/100km for the combined cycle, with emissions pegged at 119g/km.

All Swifts arrive with a 37-litre fuel tank.

Honda claims a combined cycle figure of 5.3L/100km.

I got an indicated 8.0L/100km, which shouldn't bother you - I really gave it some stick because I seriously enjoyed driving the manual. Careful driving will yield better results. Incidentally, 8.0L/100km is very close to the claimed urban figure, which is where this car spent most of its time.

It’s lighter than before (tipping the scales at a featherweight 870kg to 915kg, depending on the trim level), and with a new architecture to boot, there’s lots to like about the Swift’s in-town capability.

The Swift has a long-standing reputation for being among the most dynamic offerings in its class, and this new version happily continues that tradition.

It’s impossibly easy to park, the steering is light and the suspension is firm enough to feel connected to the road while still soaking up (most) surface issues. The vision is great, too, while the in-cabin tech in all but the cheapest model will score plenty of points with the Swift’s target customers.

Venture out of town, though, and the Swift can feel like an out-of-water fish, lacking the grunt required to confidently overtake and requiring plenty of downward force on the accelerator to summit anything steeper than the driveway.

But the Swift is made for the urban jungle, and in that context, it makes a lot of sense. Well, it does in everything from the GL Navigator up. You’d have to think that stripping multimedia options from the entry-level car will make it as popular with Gens Y and Z as a rotary-dial smartphone.

If you asked me which car, in all the world, would I least expect to be good fun to drive, I wouldn't immediately say the Jazz, but it would have been in the mix. But it turns out it shouldn't be, because in this rarely purchased manual guise, it's terrific fun. 

The view out front is great. In fact, the view everywhere is terrific - from the inside the Jazz almost feels like it's more glass than metal, but not in a way that makes you feel unsafe. Like its HR-V twin under the skin (yes, it's more Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger twins, but they are actually related), the windscreen is gigantic but the Jazz also has those little three-quarter windows over the front wheels. Allied with its size, it's an absurdly easy car to manoeuvre.

The engine is pretty vocal, sure, and it's only going to ironically earn the nickname "The Beast", the Jazz is really rather handy. The controls are light, from clutch to gear throw, with steering that's just right to keep up with the limited grip from the front wheels. 

The ride is quite impressive, at least for front-seat passengers - rear passengers  won't be so happy with the torsion beams banging over speed humps. Body roll isn't a concern, but nor is it flat through the turns. It's the sort of car you lean into, like an old Mini.

It's a noisy thing, though. The engine is quite gravelly and there's a fair bit of road noise in the cabin. The weak stereo doesn't really cover the racket, either. On smooth surfaces there's a smidge of wind noise, so a long trip should be okay. It's way more fun than the CVT auto, though, so save yourself the $2000 and enjoy an excellent manual experience.

Honda fits six airbags, ABS, stability and traction controls, brake assist, brake force distribution, (grainy) reversing camera and hill hold. There are three top-tether baby seat anchors.

ANCAP awarded the Jazz five stars in 2015, the highest available.

Absent is the identically priced Mazda2 Neo's forward autonomous emergency braking and two ISOFIX points.

The Swift is lagging behind its Korean competitors in terms of warranty, serving up a three-year/100,000km warranty and six-month/10,000km service intervals.

Suzuki’s capped-price servicing program limits the cost for the first three services to $175 each, but you’ll find pricing increases from there.

Honda offers a generous five-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty on all its models. Service pricing is capped for the first five years or 10 services, whichever you reach first. Costs bounce between $259 and $297, with the website listing additional items you might need, such as brake fluid (every two years, $40 extra) or various filters. The manual costs the same to service as the CVT auto.