Last week it was the joyful VW Up GTI. This week it's the other dinky little starter hot hatch, the Suzuki Swift Sport. Tiny and cute the pair of them, like hot hatches in miniature, with very simple powertrains and price tags that are almost irresistibly reasonable.
Except worryingly few of those adjectives now describe the latest Swift Sport, which is correctly labelled Swift Sport Hybrid. Suzuki's pocket rocket has been updated for 2020 and among the revisions is a part-electric drivetrain. It's a mild hybrid rather than a plug-in and the hardware only weighs 15kg. But what was once one of the simplest and most pared-back performance hatches you could buy is now the opposite.
Maybe all such cars will be before long. It gets worse for the Swift Sport, though, because not only is it much bigger than it used to be, it's also much more expensive. Nowadays it's an inch and a half wider than it was a decade ago and five inches longer. And while you used to be able to buy a brand new Swift Sport for about the same as it would've cost to park said car in central London for a week, you now have to fork out £21,570.
The new Swift Sport is £5000 more expensive than the Up GTI. That's understandable, perhaps, given it's a slightly bigger and more lavishly equipped car. But what's utterly perplexing to me is that the Suzuki is now only £700 cheaper than the brilliant 200hp Ford Fiesta ST. And that will be absolutely fine, just as long as the Swift Sport Hybrid turns out to be the very best small hot hatch ever conceived.
Its engine is a 1.4-litre four-cylinder turbo that produces 129hp. That means this latest variant is 10hp down on the previous version, and with it a full second slower to 62mph (now 9.1 seconds). On the other hand, the hybrid powertrain does develop a fulsome 173lb ft of torque, the electric motor helping to stroke the car along at low speeds to reduce fuel consumption (by six per cent, says Suzuki) and also fill in some of the holes in the engine's torque curve.
There is a six-speed manual gearbox between that engine and the front wheels, the gear lever that you use to shuffle up and down it now 10 per cent shorter in its throw. Suzuki's engineers have made similarly iterative refinements to the chassis: the press pack talks of 'a 15 per cent increase in camber rigidity during cornering' and 'toe rigidity improved by 1.4 times at the rear'. They've tweaked the hubs and bearings and trailing arms and roll bars to make the car sharper to drive, all without upping the spring and damper rates so as to avoid making the suspension less compliant.
Inside you'll find all the hard and scratchy plastics that you should expect of a car that's based on a very affordable shopping hatchback, but also solid build quality and decent switchgear. The seats are very supportive with generous bolsters and the seating position itself is very good. When I ran a Swift Sport for six months back in 2008 I disliked only its comically lofty seating position and the steering wheel, which was always ever so slightly out of reach. This model is vastly better in both regards.
The hybrid system does harvest energy under braking, but unless you're really trying to notice it or you're looking out for the little telltale symbol in the instrument cluster, you aren't really aware of it. In fact, you're never really aware this car has a hybrid system at all. It works silently and imperceptibly in the background, like the world's best butler.
What you're always aware of, however - and it is probably linked to the hybrid system harvesting energy under braking - is the hopelessly vague brake pedal. For the first two inches of its travel nothing happens whatsoever. Then, over the final half-inch of travel, everything happens and you stand the car on its nose. Modulating the brake pedal is tricky, although you do slowly become accustomed to it.
My only other complaint is that the turbo engine feels completely unsuited to a very small and light (and 1025kg it's 45kg lighter than the Up GTI) hot hatch. My old car had the kind of highrevving, normally-aspirated four-pot that begged to be stretched out in every gear. It was sweetness itself, pulling harder and harder until you crashed it into the limiter. And that's precisely the sort of engine I want in this sort of car. This latest one is torquey and admirably responsive for a turbo unit, but it also runs out of puff at 5000rpm and then out of revs before 6000.
In the sort of car that you door-handle everywhere, an engine that's happiest in its mid-range feels completely out of place. That's a shame because the Swift Sport's chassis is a peach. The steering is slightly numb mid-corner, but the rest of the car feels so cohesive in the way it leans onto its outer wheels and then pivots about its centre point in bends. On comparatively fluid suspension, the body rolls appreciably in corners and pogos up and down everywhere else, but the tyres are always pressed hard into the road surface where they generate strong and consistent grip.
The most exciting thing about how the Swift finds its way along a B-road is its adjustability on the throttle. Or rather, off the throttle. Turn into a bend with the throttle closed or lift off it sharply mid-bend and the rear of the car begins to swing around. That gives the Suzuki a dimension the Up GTI can only dream of. It's therefore more fun to drive, although I can't help but think the Swift Sport Hybrid would be even more enjoyable if its engine were a high-revving one and its price tag not so great. What reason is there to have this Suzuki over the far faster, much sharper class-leading Fiesta ST? I can't think of one, even though I had a hugely enjoyable time driving it.
SPECIFICATION | SUZUKI SWIFT SPORT HYBRID
Engine: 1373cc, 4-cyl, turbo, mild hybrid
Transmission: Six-speed manual
Power: 129hp @ 5500rpm
Torque: 173lb ft @ 2000rpm
0-62mph: 9.1 secs
Top speed: 130mph
Kerb weight: 1025kg
MPG: 50.1mpg
CO2: 127g/km
Price: £21,570
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