Suzuki Swift Sport Review & Prices

The Suzuki Swift Sport is a small sporty city car with a chunky body kit, a nippy turbocharged petrol engine, and a reasonably roomy interior that help make it good to look at, fun to drive and easy to live with every day.

But, is that enough to tempt you away from the likes of the Ford Fiesta ST? In sporting terms, taking on the likes of the fast Ford or the VW Polo GTI, it’s closer to Leyton Orient than Liverpool, but as in football, there’s always the chance of an upset…

It’s also got some green credentials too, which is unusual for a hot hatch. While you’ll not quite be at vegan, bamboo-bike riding, reusable-coffee-cup owning rainforest-grower levels of eco smugness, the Swift does now have mild-hybrid tech that’ll help save fuel and lower its emissions.

And where the Fiesta ST looks pretty much identical to a cheaper (and slower) ST-Line model, the sportiest Suzuki Swift comes with a huge gaping grille, some faux carbon fibre trims, 17-inch alloy wheels and two large exhausts (which are entirely real!) that you don’t get on the standard model.

It’s a similar story inside – there are plenty of contrasting red trims on the dashboard and centre console and you get a flat-bottomed steering wheel, just like a race car.

Unfortunately, while the Suzuki Swift Sport might look cool inside, cheap-feeling scratchy plastics mean it also feels a bit nasty.

Thankfully, you do get lots of equipment as standard, including a touchscreen infotainment system with built-in sat nav and smartphone mirroring. The Suzuki Swift Sport is just as spacious inside as the standard Swift too, so there’s room for six-foot-tall adults in the front and enough room for three kids to side-by-side in the back.

Sadly, it loses some ground to other sporty small cars in terms of boot space. There’s still room for a few suitcases and more than enough space for a weekly shop but the Fiesta ST is significantly larger.

It isn’t quite as fast as the Fiesta ST either – the Swift Sport takes a modest 9.1 seconds to accelerate from 0-62mph – but the revvy 1.4-litre turbo petrol engine makes it feel faster than the numbers suggest.

The Swift’s precise steering and strong brakes mean you can have a blast threading your way down tight country lanes without endangering your driving licence and its stable suspension helps maximise grip in tight corners without feeling too bouncy on rough roads.

The Suzuki Swift Sport’s small size and relatively large window mean it’s a doddle to drive in town too, and it won’t cost the earth to run, either. Official figures have the fuel economy at an impressive 50mpg.

Sure, it might not be quite as exciting to drive as the Fiesta ST, but the more affordable Suzuki Swift Sport is still an excellent compact hot hatch that’s easy to live with during the week and fantastic fun when the weekend arrives.

Want to nab one for yourself? Check out carwow’s Suzuki Swift Sport deals or browse used Swift Sports from a network of trusted dealers. And we’ve got plenty of other used Suzukis available too, and when you’ve decided on your next car, sell your car online through carwow.

The Swift is either really cheap or slightly too expensive, depending upon which angle you look at it from. It’s cheap if you look at it compared to the Volkswagen Polo GTI, Hyundai i20 N or the Ford Fiesta ST. Both of those cars are significantly more expensive, to the tune of nearly £5,000, than the Suzuki. Given how much fun the Suzuki is to drive, that makes it something of a bargain.

However, given how cheap the Swift’s cabin feels, and how small its boot is, not to mention the significant power deficit it’s running compared to the Polo GTI and Fiesta ST, you’d have to conclude that it’s actually on the pricey side. Balanced against that is the Swift’s excellent reputation for reliability and its lengthy standard equipment list.

If anything, a closer competitor to the Swift Sport would have been the fizzy little Volkswagen Up GTI, but sadly that’s not on sale in the UK anymore. One car that the Swift Sport really needs to watch out for is actually the five-door version of the Mini Cooper S — that costs only around £3,000 more than the Swift Sport, has 178hp from a 2.0-litre turbo engine, and is much more sophisticated to drive, although equally much less well-equipped as standard.

The Swift Sport is great fun on a country road, but it can feel a bit too firm around town and not refined enough for long motorway runs

In town

The Swift is a really small car — just 3.8-metres long — so it’s dead easy to drive in town. The steering and pedals feel nice and light on urban roads, and the brakes are pretty smooth and not jerky. The manual gearshift is slick and there’s a nice clicky mechanical feel to it which will please the driving enthusiasts. Visibility all-round is fine (aside from slightly thick rear pillars) and it’s manoeuvrable – there’s loads of steering lock and turning circle is just 9.6-metres, so mini roundabouts are a doddle. It’s really easy to park too, helped by a standard reversing camera – which has pretty murky display quality – and rear parking sensors.

The Swift Sport is more stiffly sprung than the standard version, so you will feel the bumps and lumps a bit more, which is worth bearing in mind.

On the motorway

The motorway is not the best place to enjoy the Swift Sport in spite of the willing grunt of that 129hp engine. It’s not terrible, but one thing you do notice is quite a lot of tyre noise. And quite a bit of wind noise come to that. The Swift Sport is quite light too, at just 1,025kg, so it’s easily affected by crosswinds. The Polo GTI is a better compact hot hatch if you’re embarking on lots of long journeys.

However, the Swift Sport does come as standard with adaptive, radar-guided cruise control and lane-keeping steering — stuff that’s frequently optional on a car this size — and that does take the strain out of longer motorway runs.

On a twisty road

That lightness that makes the Swift Sport such a pain on breezy motorways pays off big time when you get on to a twisty road. It’s so chuckable in the corners, and instantly paints a big smile on your face. There’s plenty of grip, and with both a turbo and the mild-hybrid system helping, the little 1.4 engine is nicely responsive.

Mind you, the Swift Sport does lack the all-round brilliant balance of the Ford Fiesta ST, which is one of the all-time great hot hatches, but it’s still a really good giggle. The only thing that really feels odd is the steering, which even in this Sport version is kind of light and springy, and doesn’t really connect you to the front wheels in the way you might expect of a small hot hatch. The uprated suspension with its thicker anti-roll bars works well though, and the improved brakes, compared to the standard Swift, are good.

That sweet little six-speed manual gearbox also gets a shorter ‘throw’ which makes it feel even better to use. There’s even a bigger radiator for improved engine cooling when you’re really pressing on.

While it might lack the sophistication of more expensive cars, the Swift Sport is fun, it is cheeky, and it is cute.

The Swift is quite practical inside, and there’s more room in the back seats than you might expect, but the boot is tiny and not very versatile

Even though the Swift is a pretty tiny car, there’s enough fore-aft adjustment in the steering wheel and the front seats to allow even tall drivers to get comfy. That’s an improvement on the standard Swift, which only gets a steering wheel that adjusts up and down, not in and out as well.

Down at the base of the dashboard, there’s a big storage tray which will hold a large-screen mobile phone, and you’ll find a USB and 12-volt socket down there too (as well as an old-school aux-in connection if anyone still uses one of those). There are two small-ish cupholders, and huge door bins which will swallow even a hefty 1.5-litre bottle of water and a refillable water bottle at the same time.

Sadly the glovebox is tiny, and basically taken up by the owner’s manual, and there’s no centre armrest, which is bad for both storage and comfort. There is a storage tray behind the gear lever and under the handbrake, but like all of the Swift’s cabin storage areas, it’s made of unlined, hard plastic which allows anything in there to slide about and rattle.

Space in the back seats

The Swift Sport is surprisingly roomy in the back seats – not what you’d expect given its tiny external dimensions. Headroom and knee room, even if you’re tall, are fine. There’s good space in the footwells for everyone’s shoes, and actually if you need to carry three people in the back it’s OK. Sure, it’s a squeeze at that point, but the flat-ish rear seat and small central mound mean it’s roomier than you might think for three, although those in the outer seats will probably be banging their heads off the roof.

If you’re carrying kids in the back, the ISOFIX points are uncovered and easy to access (no annoying little flaps or covers to deal with) while the doors open wide enough that it’s not too hard to load in even a bulky child car seat. There’s a single rear cupholder in the centre, at the rear of the main console, and more space for bottles in the relatively small door bins. Oh, and the rear windows wind all the way down, which is refreshing (in both senses).

To be fair, a Polo or Fiesta is roomier still in the back, but overall the Swift impresses for its rear space.

Boot space

265 litres. That’s what the Swift Sport offers in terms of boot volume. It’s not the worst that you can find – a three-door Mini Cooper offers only 211 litres – but compared to the gargantuan boot of, say, the admittedly less hot hatchy Skoda Fabia Monte Carlo (380 litres) or the 352 litres that you’ll get in a Hyundai i20, it’s pretty poor. Actually, it’s not too bad compared to the VW Polo GTI’s 303 litres, but there are others with much, much more space than this.

That said, the boot is relatively deep and square, so four airline carry-on sized suitcases will fit, but that does mean dealing with the huge load lip, which is a pain to lug heavy things over. There’s also no spare wheel, and only one shopping bag hook.

The rear seats fold down in a 60:40 split, and because the boot is small, you can do that just by leaning in rather than having to go around the side of the car. Sadly, there’s no flat boot floor when the back seats are folded, and they leave a huge lip over which anything big is going to have to be lifted. There is one nice touch — a little clip, which keeps the seatbelt in position when you fold the back seats, meaning that they don’t get trapped behind when you flip the seats back up again.

The luggage cover is also really cheap and nasty, and there’s nowhere to stash it in the boot when you’re not using it, so it’s going to get either damaged or lost (or just chucked into a hedge).

The look of the cabin is nice, but cheap materials mean the feel isn't so positive

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Swift Sport’s cabin does feel pretty cheap. There’s a lot of very scratchy, hard black plastic and even though the Sport’s cabin gets jazzed-up with some red trim and red contrast stitching for the steering wheel and gear lever, it’s all a bit low-rent in there.

That said, the design of the dash is quite nice, and the little three-spoke steering wheel feels good to hold. The sports front seats are a nice touch too, but possibly a little bit too snug and body-hugging. If you’re not the most slender, you’re going to find them a bit tight for comfort.

All Swifts come with a standard 7.0-inch touchscreen, and the Swift Sport gets standard-fit sat nav too. It’s an OK screen, but it’s slipped well behind the best systems. It’s easy enough to find your way around, but the graphics are a bit too ‘My First iPad’ and the map display for the sat nav looks woefully old-fashioned. At least it does come with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto so you can sidestep the worst of it.

The heating and air-con controls are nice, chunky rotary switches which are easy to use, but which do feel a bit cheap. The main analogue instruments look smart enough, if a little old fashioned, but the little digital screen in between them is a bit fiddly to use. The Sport does get some extra display screen options though, including throttle and brake use, torque and power, a G-force meter, and a turbo boost gauge.

While the Swift Sport isn’t as powerful as some of its competitors, it is pretty frugal thanks to the mild-hybrid system which means that the 1.4 turbo petrol engine can be switched off earlier, and kept off longer, when you’re trickling around town. Suzuki quotes an official average fuel consumption of 50.4mpg, and you can genuinely get that if you’re careful. If you’re enjoying yourself a bit more though, it’ll fall to low-forties, or high-thirties.

CO2 emissions of 125g/km aren’t too bad for a sporty hatchback, so the Swift Sport will cost only £210 to tax for the first year.

The Swift Sport comes with lots of standard safety kit, including radar-guided cruise control, lane-keeping steering, traffic sign recognition, a speed limiter, a tyre pressure monitor, curtain airbags, and a rear cross traffic alert.

Its Euro NCAP crash test results were mixed – the standard Swift only scored three stars out of five when tested, needing an optional safety pack to get a better four-star score.

The Sport does come with deadlocks, locking wheel nuts, an alarm and an immobiliser, but as with all sporty models it’s probably worth investing in a tracker too.

Warranty wise, you’re looking at a pretty basic three years or 60,000 miles. Suzuki tends to make reliable cars, and the Swift should be no exception. Cynically, you might point out that with an old-fashioned touchscreen and a manual gearbox, there’s not a lot to go wrong, but Suzuki as a brand often tops the rankings in reliability surveys, so we’d not expect any major issues to raise their heads.

That said, there have been some recalls for the Swift, including a faulty 12-volt cable, an issue with the brake booster, and — most alarmingly — a faulty airbag sensor which could trigger the rear side ‘bag if you slammed the back door a little too hard…