We’re on the record as confirmed fans of the Suzuki Jimny. How could you not be? The extent to which it cuts against the current SUV grain is just too delicious to ignore. After all, it was tiny, stripped out like a phone box, economical because it was so light and good to look at because it came out of the factory squared off like a squaddies’ haircut. And when Suzuki still sold it in the UK, it was triflingly cheap: just £16,769 (without the VAT) back in 2021. The LCV version was, admittedly, a useless commercial vehicle - but it was as loveable as a Yorkshire Terrier, and probably no more expensive to run.
Naturally, all the affection did mask some genuine underlying pitfalls. Even we had to concede that the on-road performance was ‘asthmatic’ and its back-to-basics character was a lot more fun when green laning than stuck in the outside lane of a motorway. Would we want to drive it to Land’s End and back? No. Would we like to drive it wherever the road stops and the land starts? Very much so. Its size might have made it useless at hauling fence posts from A to B - but it was ideally proportioned for threading its way along England’s tree-lined byways.
Accordingly, this made the Jimny ripe for aftermarket modification. Why not capitalise on the car’s shrink-wrapped G-wagen image by going the whole hog on its previously modest off-road capabilities? The most prominent UK specialist to do this was Twisted, which (as we discovered last year) went to the trouble of bolting a turbocharger to the 1.5-litre engine, thereby accessing a considerably more spritely 165hp. With the chassis alterations to match, Matt B declared the result a ‘whole lotta fun’. No surprises there.
But the Jimny by Twisted we tried was £49,500 plus VAT. Which is the sort of money that would buy you a very nice secondhand Land Rover Defender Hard Top. From 2024. Granted, this brand-new ‘Surf Edition’ example from Seeker UK is £34,900 plus VAT - meaning a not-quite-so-nice used Defender is also findable - but we couldn’t resist shining the PH spotlight on it. It’s simply too beige and too obviously a labour of love for us to disregard, even at silly money.
In fairness to Seeker, which has been specialising in commercial vehicle restyles since 2007, its suggested price for a more modestly made-over Jimny is a vaguely more reasonable-sounding £26,950 plus VAT, but, as we suspected, clearly the kitchen sink has been thrown at the Surf Edition, which sports not just the 2-inch lift kit and oversized steelies, but also the rear seat conversion (in the sense that it has some), full privacy glass, body graphics, ‘surf-style’ roof rack and the extension of the body colour to all plastics.
Seeker claims the car as the ‘last beige one in the UK’ which presumably means it’s the last one it has personally summoned into being. Either way, we’re quite taken with it - even allowing for the fact that the tuner’s attention does not extend to the engine bay. But probably you won’t miss Twisted’s turbocharger if you use the Surf Edition for getting between a cosy pub and the water’s edge. The surfboard won’t fit, of course - but you’ll look bloody cool getting there.
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