Review of the new Suzuki SX4 - Travel Story

Every summer, thousands of British motorists roll off ferries or trains and onto foreign soil. Ahead of them, the vast expanses of continental Europe and its far-flung holiday destinations. Also in store are driving experiences quite different to those most of us encounter on a daily basis. The distances, cargos and alien surroundings make the foreign driving holiday one of the toughest tasks the average family car is likely to undertake. It's that challenge, rather than the promise of sun, wine, baguettes and rivers, that prompted us to head for Southwest France in the Suzuki SX4 we've been evaluating on a long term test.

The SX4 is not a big car. Scarcely any larger than today's crop of super-sized superminis, it wouldn't feature high on many lists of ideal holiday transportation - especially when well over 1,000 miles of motorway driving was on the cards simply to get there and back. Despite this and having spent a good few months with the Suzuki prior to the trip, we were quietly confident in its abilities.

The SX4 might be supermini-sized but it isn't a supermini. Well, not quite anyway. With its taller shape and elevated seating position, it's better viewed as a diminutive crossover 4x4. There was no all-wheel-drive on our model, that's reserved for the more expensive 4Grip versions, but the car has got the look of a miniature SUV, albeit one with any trace of aggression and attitude bred out of it. The main benefits this design produces are inside where you sit a little higher with more headroom than you'd get in a Ford Fiesta or similar. The few centimetres of added height also make loading the car easier, which was appreciated when the wife presented a suitcase so heavy it can only have been filled with lead ingots.

A 6am ferry crossing is a difficult thing to recommend in the hours immediately before it but with hindsight, an early start is sensible when you've a big swathe of France to cross by nightfall. Plenty of fellow bleary-eyed travellers wandering the Dover quayside confirmed we didn't have a monopoly on lack of sleep after all.

"There's a tendency to underestimate the Suzuki SX4"

The operation ran like clockwork at the port and the eerily smooth crossing on one of P&O's finest (www.poferries.com) presented a chance for some shut-eye. Then it was time for the SX4 to meet the Autoroutes. With its 1.6-litre petrol engine producing 118bhp, our car had good legs for one so small. Cruising around the 130kmph speed limit on toll roads mainly populated by sun-chasing Bits, it remained reasonably composed with just enough flexibility in reserve to get itself out of trouble without dropping out of top (5th) gear. The engine drones a little if you let the revs rise and ends up sounding rough as it closes in on the red line but keep things gentle and it stays an unobtrusive companion.

More impressive was the ride which proved very comfortable. This was partly down to the well-surfaced French roads (the post trip return to home turf soon reminded us why the UK road network remains internationally recognised as one of the harshest tests of a car's suspension going) but the SX4 is still impressively fluid for a car of its size. Long distance comfort levels were upped further by the supportive seating in the car.

On the twistier country lanes south and east of Bordeaux, the taller shape of the car wasn't the hindrance you might expect. You couldn't put this little Suzuki in the sporty bracket, but helped by the firm suspension, it doesn't roll and lean too much on its way around corners. With a reassuring weight to the steering and a particularly nice positive action to the five-speed manual gearbox, there's a lot to be said for the car's all-round performance on the road, as long as you're not expecting fireworks.

Like the exterior of the car, the SX4's interior is unfussy but it more or less does the job. The chunky buttons and dials for the stereo and ventilation system could show some other manufacturers a thing or two on grounds of user-friendliness. The build quality in the cabin is certainly robust but the plastics around the door trims and the lower part of the dash are bendy and cheap. The thin door pockets and minimal glovebox mean storage space can also be at a premium and having to reach past the steering wheel to operate the button for the trip computer soon became tiresome.

On our journey, the rear seats picked up the slack when storage options elsewhere reached capacity and it's a good thing they were empty, both for that reason and because legroom is rather tight back there. You couldn't really ask a pair of adults to spend a seven-hour journey in the rear of the SX4 but they would fit and could probably put up with it for shorter intervals without the aid of pain killing injections. The boot opening has a large lip which forces you to lower items down inside it. This isn't ideal but the space available is large and uniformly shaped.

There's a tendency to underestimate the Suzuki SX4 that we've fallen foul of on a number of occasions over the course of our long term test but the ease with which it handled the tribulations of a holiday to France should finally set the seal on it as a very competent family car. It's lacking in style and in the fancy details that help get signatures on dotted lines in car showrooms but on the small car basics, it does well. Small and tall usually equates to wayward handling but the SX4, aided by its well-judged control weights and suspension, is good on the road. Long journeys certainly aren't beyond it and practicality is OK so long as you're not fully loaded. Our 1.6-litre petrol model managed an acceptable 42mpg average over the course of the trip and ultimately, it's hard to be too critical when you see an asking price of around £12,500.

TOP 5 SX4 DEALS

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