Suzuki Swift - long-term review

This is a rare occasion – a small car joins the Top Gear fleet. And not just any small car, no... this is the Top Gear Award winning Suzuki Swift. Yes, you may remember back in 2024 that the Swift scooped victory in the TG Awards against some stiff competition. It was up against the Renault Clio, Volkswagen Polo, Toyota Yaris, Mini Cooper and MG3, all superb small cars in their own right, but the Swift’s mixture of comfort and practicality (and its remarkably small price) saw it lay claim to the big prize.

So, a year on, is the Suzuki Swift still the best small car money can buy? How has the past year treated it? Have any newcomers joined the fray that could upset the proverbial applecart? Good questions, and we intend to answer them over the course of the following six months.

Back to the car in question. The Swift you see in these photos is a 1.2 Mild Hybrid Ultra Allgrip manual in a rather eye catching and attractive blue. It tips the scales at 1,389kg, so should be able to make the most of its 81bhp and 83lb ft of torque. Its diminutive size – another part of the reason it won Small Car of the Year in issue 391 – means it’ll be easy to thread through city streets and also down ridiculously tight country lanes where, for reasons unknown, I inevitably always meet huge, ginormous tractors.

This Ultra Allgrip specified Swift costs £22,049; using the online Suzuki finance calculator shows that equates to a pcm finance cost of £301.76. Not at all bad. Moreover, the total amount payable is only £23,233.60 – that’s just over a grand more than if you walked into a dealership and slapped a bundle of cash on the table. But who does that?

So far, so good. But, as Ollie Kew pointed out in his Small Car of the Year feature, nothing is perfect – not even the Swift. He made the point that the baby Suzuki has a face like a beluga whale (personally, I’d say it’s more of a guppy) and that the three other sides are nothing to write home about either. Will we come to love – or at least accept – our little blue friend? Only time will tell, and I for one am looking forward to spending some quality time getting to know this small winner a little bit better.