We asked two dudes – one recently retired and a young professional – to test drive the new hybrid Suzuki Swift.
Chris, Baby Boomer and city dweller
Someone once told me the Suzuki Swift was the new Morris Minor. Ubiquitous. Unpretentious. Reliable. In the 20 years since the car first arrived on the market, the Swift has become a value statement. A cultural signifier.
The car I’m driving today is a hybrid: 4.3L/100km. The body has acquired a slimming groove around its waist, it's sportier than previous models but not distinctive. The Swift blurs into the background aesthetics of most modern cars.
Lowering myself into the vehicle, my knees twinge, making me appreciate the waist-high seats of my last car. Inside is an imposing touchscreen which positions the Swift in line with today's hi-tech vehicles. I’m sure it’s got software gems, but part of me wants a ‘dumbed-down version’: just Google maps, the odd phone call and some music.
Baby Boomer, Chris, reviews the Suzuki Swift.
Separate from the touchscreen, there’s a panoply of buttons around the steering wheel and on the dash. Without careful reading of the manual, I’m afraid to push anything. There’s a button that says OFF which I discover also means ON. And the fan/heating has an OFF but no ON, activating only when you fiddle with the adjustments.
I live in a central city apartment with a basement carpark where everything is tight. The Swift is compact, making it easy to navigate parking areas and city streets. But parallel parking, guided by the rear vision camera leaves me walking distance from the kerb. ‘I’m sticking too far out’, I think, so I get in and try again. And again. A fisheye lens distorts the view and with each reversal I have to mentally recalibrate the guidelines.
I drive my wife and my son from Auckland to the Hamilton Gardens. Although our son must execute some clever contortions to get into the back, the rear seats are surprisingly comfortable, despite being compact. And he likes the fact that he can access the boot from the rear seats.
The expressway is under construction and road cones force us out of our lane. The steering resists and pulls me back to where it “thinks” I should be. For a minute I panic.
When we stop at Pokeno for a toilet break, my son and I review the online manual. We discover that each time I start the car, I need to deactivate the Lane Departure Prevention by holding down a button for three seconds.
There's so much beeping in the car, my son jokes, it sounds like we’re in an emergency room at a hospital. The noises generally signal an imminent crash. The AI is clever, but not clever enough to distinguish a roadside parked car from a car in your lane. But better safe than sorry.
The dashboard has a nifty little sign that tells you the speed limit in the area you're driving in. It relies on cameras to pick up speed signs, except… sometimes it's wrong. It scans a speed limit on an adjacent road sign, telling me I should be going 50km/h on a 100km/h motorway.
Returning from Hamilton Gardens as evening descends, I expect the headlights, set to auto, to engage, but as it gets darker they stubbornly refuse to ignite. Perhaps it isn't dark enough. In the end, I engage them manually.
We arrive home and I’m surprised I’m not tired. While there are a few technological quirks and some things which are not as intuitive as I’d like, the Swift is an effortless drive. It corners with confidence. The interior and driving positions are ergonomic. My foot falls comfortably into position for the brake and accelerator, and the three hours to Hamilton and back slipped by in a comfortable, pleasantly temperate cocoon.
The interior of the Suzuki Swift is surprisingly spacious.
Thomas, Gen Z, Creative and Content Executive
Good looking, sporty and efficient… enough about myself, let me tell you about the 2024 Suzuki Swift.
I drove the latest 2024 Suzuki Swift RSC model. We all know what a Swift is: it’s a young, zippy and aggressive hatchback, usually driven by those with the same characteristics. But this model was different.
Coming from an early 2000s Toyota Corolla, I didn’t know what to expect. Let me break down how I found the Swift. Who, what, when, where and why? Boring. Let me answer the real questions: how, how, how, how and how.
Gen Z, Thomas, takes the Suzuki for a spin.
How does it look?The first thing I cared about was whether the car looks good, and it does. The exterior is sporty and modern, while the interior is comfortable and practical. Like a TARDIS, it feels bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, while also being sophisticated and familiar. As vain as it sounds, I felt pretty good being seen in this car.
How’s the tech? Heated seats, textured materials and great outside noise insulation is found in the Swift. The car also has a nine-inch touchscreen infotainment system with both wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, matched with an epic sound system, which made being in bumper-to-bumper Auckland traffic much more bearable.
The car also has heaps of safety features which are great. Adaptive cruise control, lane keep assist, lane departure prevention, and a boatload of other beeping noises whenever I did something that would’ve made me fail my restricted licence test. And although feeling the car move itself to stay within the lanes scared me at times, I know that it was just trying to keep me safe.
I swear the beeping noises were from the Swift and not the cars behind me.
How’s parking? Easy. A compact body with large windows and great visibility, topped with a wide reversing camera and proximity sensors made parking in the city a breeze. Even though the beeping parking proximity sensors annoyed me, everyone I parked next to had the luxury of coming back to find their cars unscathed.
How does it drive? Now for the elephant in the room, the 2024 Suzuki Swift has a small 1.2L mild hybrid engine. It’s jumpy and a bit uncomfortable to drive, especially on the motorway. The regenerative braking was a bit stronger than I would have liked, and the lag due to the engine auto-stop system made the Swift feel slow at times. In all fairness, these are extremely common features which may just take time to get used to. And finally…
How does it feel? It excels when driving through the city and suburbs. Due to its size, the Swift extremely agile, the 1.2L hybrid engine is very fuel efficient, and its comfortable suspension takes speedbumps like a champ. The quiet cabin, along with tech that you’d expect from a car made in 2024, made driving a pleasant experience, even if some features freaked me out a bit.
The 2024 Suzuki Swift is great if you use it like a Swift. It’s hardly a family car, probably not a joyride car and definitely not a road trip car; first and foremost, it’s a city car. It’s agile, efficient and practical. It’s a car that can weave through busy parking lots and narrow streets. It’s a car you can quickly take up to the dairy multiple times a day without worrying about how much petrol you use.
And for a Gen Z driver like me, that’s all a car needs. Especially the part about taking speedbumps like a champ.
Story by Chris Van Ryn and Thomas Siemsen for the Summer 2024 issue of AA Directions Magazine. Chris Van Ryn is a freelance writer who regularly contributes to AA Directions magazine, and Thomas Siemsen is a Creative and Content Executive at the AA.
Explore more from AA Directions magazine while you're here:
- What do vulnerable road users want all motorists to know?
- Meet the founder of the Z World Manu Championships, Scott Rice
- Marvel at the majestic Kakadu National Park on an Outback Spirit Tour.
