TMW - The Suzuki Ignis, another brilliant small car from Suzuki, the brand that specialises in small cars.

Well, today seems to be the era of SUV and small cars, an area that Suzuki dominates, the small car range is one of the best that you can buy, from the Celerio, Swift, Baleno and this the Ignis, a name that’s from its past, but placed onto a brilliant new car, and one that deserves to take the sector to new heights.

This car is not very big from the look of it, but it is really like a TARDIS, for those Dr Who fans, there seems to be so much room inside, that five adults CAN sit in reasonable comfort, or four adults for a longer journey, at less than 4m long and less than 1.8 m wide, you can quite clearly see that it is a small car, but that’s not just its IP.

This car can come with a mild hybrid system, and a four wheel drive set up too, with auto and manual, and a 1.2litre engine as fitted to our car.

Let’s start with the exterior, it is different, and vastly likeable, it looks chunky and capable, which it is, the oversized headlights, LED projector are like a pair of eyes, the lines of the car flow through to the back where there is a louvered look to the C-Pillar, it gives the car a different look and one that suits it very much.

it then follows around to the back where the boot is sharply cut off, which unfortunately gives the boot a small amount of room, an extra inch or two would have made all the difference, but this is what you get for the money, and at £14,464 for the top of the range with optional paint, you get a lot of car for that money.

The nice and well suited black alloy wheels along with the white paint really go together very well, once inside, the dashes of orange break up a dark interior, an interior that's well positioned with lots of toys and kit.

The seats we found are very comfortable, but our only concern is the side bolsters are not supported, they feel like they are just shaped foam, which over time will go flat and make the seat covers floppy, but as a loan car, they are very suitable and comfortable.

You can manoeuvre the seats and steering wheel enough to get you a near perfect position, once there everything is at hand, you do not need to stretch for buttons or switchgear, and the touchscreen tablet, which is similar to Mercedes, in the way it is just attached to the dash rather than be a full part of the dash, has everything near and handy, and very easy to use.

The sat nav is a little slow; well to be honest the entire tablet is very slow with PIONEER on screen for ages before it comes to life, once there all is good, with plenty of options onscreen to play with.

The rear seats are suitably comfortable, and four can sit there in comfort for longer journeys, with five able to sit for shorter ones, anything longer and the three adults in the back would get uncomfortable, quickly.

The boot space is ok, it can take a couples weekly shopping, or with the seats down you get far more room to put bigger amounts of luggage etc.

Once on the road the 1.2 litre can easily keep up with motorway traffic and can overtake with ease too, the car has a top speed of 106mph, but at 11.4 seconds to 62mph, it is a tad slow, but once wound up, it’s a great car, it has a raspy engine note that sounds very sporty, but once in top gear, and you are cruising, that note seems to disappear and it becomes a nice quiet environment, the fuel consumtion of the 1,2 litre is

·       Urban 57.6mpg

·       Extra Urban 70.6mpg

·       Combined 65.7mpg

Are these achievable, well, no, no matter how I drove the car I could not get the in-car display to get anywhere near the indicated figures, but I did get an over all of 50.4mpg, and that included local, city and motorway driving, as well as a long distance journey to the SMMT event at Millbrook.

The clutch is very, very, light, I struggled for the first couple of days to get the biting point just right without slipping it too much, but by the time it came to give the car back, I was able to change gear nicely.

The car has a vast array of standard kit and equipment, to make it a safe and easy car to drive, these include but not limited too

·       AllGrip Four Wheel Drive

·       16” Black Gloss Alloys

·       Rear Privacy Glass

·       Wheel Arch Extensions

·       Navigation System

·       Bluetooth

·       Steering wheel Controls

·       Auto Air Conditioning

·       Automatic Light

·       Automatic Wipers

·       LED Daytime Running Lights

·       Double height luggage area floor

·       DAB Radio

·       Twin USB Socket

·       Electric windows all round

·       Information Display

·       Keyless entry and start

·       TPMS

·       Engine auto Start/Stop

·       Cruise control

·       And far, far, more

The Ignis is a brilliant car; there is no getting away from that, Suzuki really does know what they are doing when it comes to design and implementation of small cars and SUV’s, the Ignis generated a number of comments from other journalists and even one of my neighbours come across to enquire about it, and thought it was a really nice car.

CONCLUSION

Ok, it’s not short of issues, with the main one being the tablet, it is just far too slow, ignore that and you have a car capable of doing everything you need of it, even going off road, not in the style of a Land Rover but its able to take rough ground in it’s stride and just waft over it.

It’s a car that will suit a number of people, from the single person, couples, or even with kids, its not a full five up long distance cruiser, the rear seats passengers would not be that comfortable for long.

I have had a number of cars and the Ignis is one I miss, it was fun, even when the car stopped it’s self because some moron walked out into the road, the car braked and stopped before I had the opportunity to think about it, and that was amazing, all cars should have this fitted as standard, it would stop a lot of rear end shunts and pedestrian accidents.