mReview: 2021 Suzuki Swift Sport - A Breath Of Fresh Air

Ahhh, the Suzuki Swift Sport, beloved by boy racers the world over for its affordability, fun-to-drive factor, and all-important modifiability. So how does this new model match up to the bar set by its predecessors? Let’s find out.

For starters, the new Swift Sport looks far more the business than its forebears. While the car still looks distinctly like a Swift Sport with that iconic Champion Yellow paint job and an overall similar shape, this new car has been redesigned with new fenders, new bumpers, and functional twin exhausts.

It’s also lower and wider, and as a result, looks far more aggressive than before. Suzuki has also managed this without following the trend of cars getting all porky.

The Swift Sport weighs in at just 1,020kg! And as we all know, weight saved is lap time gained.

While the previous iterations of the Swift came with a naturally aspirated 1.6L four-banger, this new generation Swift Sport is the first one to come from the factory with not just a turbocharged engine, but also a mild hybrid system.

To get the stats out of the way, this new Swift Sport makes 127hp and 235Nm of torque. While admittedly it’s not the most powerful car, it does fall into Category A for COE which means it’s a little more affordable (we’ll get more into the price later).

What matters more for day-to-day driving is the torque, of which we have a very healthy amount thanks to the turbo and that mild hybrid system.

The mild-hybrid system component of this 1.4L BoosterJet turbo powerplant helps to fill in the torque curve besides doing the normal mild-hybrid jobs such as powering the accessories.

That results in this car being almost mosquito-like in its ability to zip about in traffic. Power delivery, however, is a rather strange experience with this car.

Prod on the throttle at low RPMs and you’re met with oodles of torque and lovely forward push. Stand on the pedal though and you do start to notice a slight lack of out-and-out horsepower.

We say slight because, in any normal daily driving scenario, the power is perfectly sufficient.

If you do bring this new Swift on a track day to Sepang though, you’re going to be on those long straights for a while.

You will undoubtedly, however, make the time up when the going gets curvy as the new Swift is a fantastic handling machine.

The suspension is soft but not wallow-y and generates gobs of grip. The term “chuckable” seems like a brilliant adjective for how the Swift handles, just how a hot hatch should be in our opinion. You can huck the Swift into corners with just a bobble from the rear as it unloads.

The car sits on its haunches mid-corner and the torque pulls you out of it. It never feels unpredictable or unsafe and inspires plenty of confidence in the driver to be able to attack corners with more speed than you might think.

Then comes the pleasure of being able to row your own gears for this new Suzuki Swift Sport is a manual. Huzzah!

And to ensure that the Swift Sport falls into enthusiast’s hands only, the only option available is the six-speed manual and what a great little gearbox it is too.

The clutch is light and forgiving, the gears pop in with almost no effort at all, and rev-matching becomes almost second-nature with the lovely brake feel making it a cinch to heel and toe.

It becomes almost compulsory these days when conducting a road test of a manual car to talk about the death of the manual and how more at one with the car you can be, but it’s not without reason.

We cannot understate how refreshing it’s been to drive stick again as the opportunities to grow few and far between, a trend, we fear, will only continue.

But swansong for the manual aside, this car is not without its shortcomings, chief of which is the price.

This new Swift Sport retails for S$109,900 which is a lot of money for a car in this segment and sometimes it gets a little hard to justify.

Granted you still get cruise control, lane departure warning, and Apple CarPlay as nice additional features but as expected from a car of this segment, the interior quality isn’t exactly top-notch.

On the upside, the Swift Sport comes with fantastically supportive sport seats and sporty red accents around the gauge cluster and dashboard.

On the downside though, it does get rather noisy at higher speeds as the noise isolation isn’t great and there’s more plastic than YG & JYP Entertainment combined.

Of course, you can’t fault Suzuki for how expensive COE prices are now even in Category A, especially when as an overall product they’ve managed to build one heck of a car.

Whether or not you’d pull out the piggy bank and drive one home is ultimately your decision but let us say this.

The Swift Sport is a perfect car for new and experienced drivers alike. It not only looks good but goes even better and you’d struggle to find anyone who wouldn’t be enamoured with this feisty, superbly handling fun machine.

We know we are.

Specs

Price:

S$109,900

Performance:

Measurements:

Features:

Prices are accurate at the time of writing.

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