Has Suzuki hit the mark with their Swift DZire or are they way off?

Creating a small sedan of of an already existing chassis is no a foreign concept. It's been done for years and continues to happen to this day. We've seen it in the Honda Brio, Toyota Yaris and of course, VW Polo. Suzuki has adopted this methodology and taken their immensely popular Swift and given it a little junk in the trunk.

Styling

Straight off the bat, it may seem as if they got the recipe for the DZire wrong. Someone may very well have been holding the cook book upside down, but that doesn't mean that they've left a bad taste in our mouths.

The styling certainly is unconventional and the rear end is the biggest culprit. While the front end has been dressed up with this facelift to include new black-backed headlights and chrome grille detailing, the rear end is where things go pear shaped.

The Swift hatch has quite a good looking back end but that same cannot be said for the DZire. While not the most attractive rump in the business, it certainly is functional – for the most part. You're given an impressive 264-litres of boot space, but you're not given folding rear seats. This is not as big a problem as one would think though. Head-to-head, you're given 152-litres in the rear of the hatch, growing to 744-litres when you fold the rear seats down – but that robs you of two seats. So, 4 passengers or room for an elephant? You just can't have both.

That makes the DZire all that more practical, especially if you're sitting with more than one offspring and cricket practice is on the cards.

Interior

Part of the facelift for the DZire was the switch to a darker interior. For some odd reason, Suzuki loves their light interiors. I've said it before, I'm a fan of light interiors, but not in cars that are supposed to be practical and daily driven. Fortunately, much like with the Ertiga, Suzuki has woken up and given us a dark interior finish in the facelifted DZire. It's a good looking one at that too, and now even better equipped than before.

It's been fitted out with Bluetooth functionality with steering wheel control and the audio system has the usual inputs for Aux and USB. It's still devoid of cruise control, but in the smaller engined 1.2-litre, it's a redundancy.

The overall fit and finish is respectable and feels well bolted together – it certainly isn't a bad place to be seated while travelling. The seats are comfortable and actually quite supportive and finished off in a dark cloth finish that seems as if it should wear well.

Motor

The mill is nothing to write home about, it's a diminutive 1.2-litre, inline four that produces 63kW and 113Nm of torque. It's a familiar motor and the same as found in the Splash and Swift hatch. It does an adequate job of getting things going but is never going to win any races. What it does manage to do is be quite frugal in its operation.

It will comfortably return 6.8l/100km on the combined cycle and accurately so. Suzuki claims it and you can trust it – no inflated ideas of economy here, just good old-fashioned honesty.
Safety

The DZire offers peace of mind as well. It's fitted with ABS and [EBD] and inside you'll find dual airbags. It carries a Euro NCAP 5-star safety rating as well, so that you can rest assured that you and your passengers are in good hands.

Pricing

The Suzuki Swift DZire retails for R144 900 and servicing is covered by a 2-year / 30 000km service plan and [warranty]