Launched last September, the new Suzuki Swift is stylish, compact yet spacious and has many attractive and user-friendly features.
It delivers on improved fuel economy, lower CO2 emission, better driving performance and safety. The highly acclaimed styling of the previous model has evolved to become more sporty and polished.
And the all-new Suzuki Swift has also been rated as one of Europe’s safest cars, achieving a maximum five star rating in the 2010 test by Euro NCAP.
Euro NCAP’s (new car assessment programme ) rating scheme focuses on the vehicle’s overall safety performance which gives consumers an easy to understand single score. The system considers occupant protection in frontal, side, pole and rear impacts as well as child protection, pedestrian protection, and the availability of driver aids.
The new Swift attained a score of 94 per cent for adult occupant protection, 82 per cent for child, 62 per cent for pedestrian, and 71 per cent for the provision of safety assistance devices with an overall total of 83 per cent. This total exceeded the score of 75 per cent required to achieve the five star rating set by Euro NCAP.
Helping Suzuki gain this high total safety performance score across all four criteria, new Swift has been developed with a new, stronger, and lighter impact absorbing bodyshell designed to improve occupant protection as well as minimising injuries to pedestrians.
Also, to ensure optimum occupant protection, new Swift includes seven airbags as standard across the range which includes driver’s knee airbag as well as whiplash mitigating front seats. Active safety equipment includes ESP (electronic stability programme ) which is also fitted as standard equipment across the new Swift range.
The new Swift is one of the cleanest petrol engine Superminis on the market with emissions of just 116g/km and only €104 road tax.
New Euro 5 1.2-ltre 94PS Dual VVT engine – one of the most powerful in its segment – offers improved torque together with combined fuel consumption of 56.5 mpg.
It is available in GL and GLX grades. The latter adds air conditioning and alloy wheels.
The new Swift is priced from €14,650 for the three door GL to €17,550 for the five door GLX with automatic transmission.
Variable gear ratio steering, increased track and larger diameter wheels with lower profile tyres allow for even better handling than the highly acclaimed outgoing Swift that first went on sale five years ago.
Shortly after launch in this part of the world, the new Swift was awarded the Best Small Car by the Association of Scottish Motoring Writers as well as the Safety Award at the Annual Scottish Car of the Year Awards, held at St Andrews on Firework night. The previous model was the Irish Car of the Year.
A 1.3-litre diesel engine is also in the pipeline. This engine emits 109g/km (down from 119g/km ) and has an impressive combined fuel consumption of 67.3mpg, an improvement on the already highly credible 62.8mpg from the outgoing Swift DDiS.
If you are in the market for a supermini, the new Swift should be on your shortlist.
