The new Suzuki Baleno is suprisingly good.

[Slushbox]

Bought a Baleno. It's very good.

Edited by Slushbox on Sunday 3rd June 10:54

[Mr2Mike]

These are impressively light weight for the size, 950kg for the Boosterjet engined car, and 920kg for the 1.2L. The equivalent Ecoboost Fiesta is almost 200kg heavier.

[Slushbox]

The Fiesta (and Polo) were on the shortlist, but my Suzuki dealer is pretty easy to live with, free courtesy cars and mostly BS free.

I have discovered a niggle, the driver's door creaks slightly when it's been sat in the sun. Total extra expense so far, £3.99 for a can of WD40.


Popular in India, it seems...

[oilslick]

Picked up one of these a few weeks ago, year old auto with 2000 miles and over £6k off new price.

First impressions are really good, one litre three-pot is surprisingly sprightly and the auto box is pretty smooth with flappy paddles to play with if you want to.

Done a couple of long motorway journeys and I'm absolutely a convert to adaptive cruise control, it's driving in super-lazy mode!

[Slushbox]

I thought I got a good deal on my 1200 mile demonstrator, though prices have dropped since I got it last year.

Edited by Slushbox on Sunday 3rd June 10:54

[Pothole]

[quote=Slushbox
Noticed very slight surface corrosion on the rear brake drums after salty winter. Liberally sprayed them with WD40, all lovely again.





[/quote]

You couldn't do that with these new-fangled disco brakes!

[Slushbox]

Pothole said:

You couldn't do that with these new-fangled disco brakes!

I like drum brakes, unless you need to 'stop' or go down 'hills'. They're re-assuringly old-fashioned and often emit interesting smoke.

[oilslick]

Slushbox said:

I updated the standard SLDA (Bosch) Nav-radio with the Android Auto fix, but the internal nav works fine for me. Android Auto has since 'updated' itself on the phone, and no longer works with the car.

Edited by Slushbox on Thursday 26th April 07:49

Could you share a link? Googling has brought up various sources I have varying degrees of confidence in!

[Slushbox]

Alas, no. The file came from the slightly dodgy personal Google drive of some fellow in Hungary I found through YouTube. Neither he, nor the link seem to be in existence.

Edited by Slushbox on Sunday 3rd June 10:54

[Fermit The Krog and Sexy Sarah]

I had to Google an image of these. Would I maybe be correct that it's a sort of in between classes size, IE bigger than a Fiesta, smaller than a Focus? Much like the Rover 200/25 was when it was launched?

[Slushbox]

Fermit The Krog and Sexy Sarah said:

I had to Google an image of these. Would I maybe be correct that it's a sort of in between classes size, IE bigger than a Fiesta, smaller than a Focus? Much like the Rover 200/25 was when it was launched?

Yes, though I'm not sure what a Rover 200 is. :-)

Baleno is the Swift's big brother. It's a 5 seater B segment hatch, 4 metres long, slightly shorter than a Fiesta but with more rear leg-room. It's sort of in the Polo class.

https://cars.suzuki.co.uk/new-cars/baleno/

Edited by Slushbox on Saturday 28th April 15:40

[Fermit The Krog and Sexy Sarah]

These things, which at the time were in no mans land size wise (although it was priced as a Focus competitor)

[Slushbox]

Ew! It's purple.

Is that you with the tennis bat?

Edited by Slushbox on Friday 27th April 15:23

[kieranblenk]

We test drove a Baleno when deciding what to replace our venerable Swift with (we still have it as we've had it that long we begrudge getting shot of it) and the auto box combined with the 1.0 petrol is a great match - a really underrated little car.

[oilslick]

Slushbox said:

Alas, no. The file came from the slightly dodgy personal Google drive of some fellow in Hungary I found through YouTube. Neither he, nor the link seem to be in existence.

The update process was also fairly fraught, in that there's every chance of bricking the unit. After the second failure with the USB method I put the files on a new SD card and stuck it in the map slot, which worked.

I'm not sure I'd risk it again. :-)

There is talk of the European Bosch SLDA Android Auto update being available through UK dealers 'soon.'

---

EDIT: I still have the zipped 'update' files, but there are a couple of tales of bricking the SLDA update, unless specific conditions are met: handbrake on and engine running. It takes 20-25 minutes, during which time there's little feed back from the screen, so the temptation is to pull everything and start over, with an expensive brick as a result. The current update is 1850.2 EU, (May 2018) the updates are region specific, so the ones from India might not be so useful.

See: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/and...

Edited by Slushbox on Sunday 29th April 07:27

Thanks for the link. I've found a couple of sources for the 1850.2 EU update and downloaded both of them. Done a file compare and they match so I think I might be brave and try it over the weekend.

[Slushbox]

You're welcome.

Noticed last night in while manouvering 4 metre long car into a 4.1 metre parking spot, that the rear-view camera works in the dark. SLDA is a nice Nav unit.

[Slushbox]

There's a recall for some Swift/Baleno models for a brake vacuum hose:

'There are 52,686 units of these cars likely to be affected which have been produced during the period December 1, 2017 and March 16, 2018.'

Cars have a VIN beginning with MBH.

Online checker:

https://apps.marutisuzuki.com/servicecampaign1.asp...