My Car - Suzuki Swift

Well it makes sense to start with my car as it is the car I've spent the most time in. Its a 2010, previous generation, Suzuki Swift with a measly 1.3 petrol packing 92BHP. It might not sound like a lot but you have to bear in mind that it is a very small car with a kerb weight of only 1045kg which is nothing when you have 92BHP to play with. To put this into context a Fiat Punto with an equivalent 1.2 petrol engine only puts out around 60BHP. This means that for the class of car which it is and especially for a first car it is surprisingly pacy. It also won't hesitate to burn through a set of front tyres with all this power thanks to the exclusion of traction control. And the addition of some racing stripes.......

Girlfriend applied the racing stripes, looks pretty professional though.

It is just coming up to three years old and 20000 on the clock. This may not seem like a lot but I have had a few other cars in that time which have come and gone but my Swift has stayed. It is only recently which it is feeling worn in. It feels much more powerful in the lower rev range than it did when I first got it, which is to be expected. This is very handy on the motorway, which is where I do most of my driving(back and forth from university) for overtaking and building up speed quickly without revving its guts out. Although I drive it on motorways I would not recommend using it as a mile-eater on a regular basis. Because it is so light it gets affected by fuel weight quite a lot. When the tank is under a quarter full it does become unsettled when driving 70-80mph and the wind can affect it. The solution to this is to just keep the tank full-ish if you plan on doing any motorway driving.

So the Swift is not a motorway cruiser so what is it? Well it isn't for shopping, surprisingly, even though its dimensions are well suited to parking in very small spaces (which I have down to an art by the way), the steering is very heavy when manoeuvring  I've driven Land Rover Defenders with lighter steering. How any old women takes a Swift to Tesco or a young girl drives around a city centre at low speeds with a car full of friends I will never know. However once you get up to speed the steering feels well weighted and steering feel is very good and direct, you can feel the grip from each tyre.

Heavy steering but I still managed this feat without touching either car!

Fuel returns aren't particularly good either. It is quoted to do 49mpg combined but I have never got near that. The highest I've been able to keep it is at 44mpg just being on motorways. 44mpg is not even really good these days, the Citroen C3 that I drove down to the north of Spain gave me nearly 60mpg on motorways.

Overall I love it and not just because it is the first proper car that I've owned but just how much I enjoy driving it. Even though it isn't the kind of car that I need for the motorway driving that I do, when I take it off the motorway and find some smaller roads to fling it around it puts a smile on my face.