2010 Suzuki SX4 JX AWD 2.0 from North America

Summary:

Awesome! AWD rocks!

Faults:

Cracked heated mirror, which was replaced under warranty.

General Comments:

Great compact car!

The SX4 is an amazing car to drive with lots of standard features like brake assist, electronic brake force distribution, 4 wheel disc brakes, roof rack, standard 6 air bags, steering mounted controls.

The car handles very well, suspension is well tuned and driving is very smooth. The AWD is very good, and it handles well in snow and icy conditions.

Overall, it is a very well built car, at highway speeds of 120km/hr there is no vibration / wobbling unlike some other compact cars that I have driven. There is a solid feel to the car. Braking is fantastic, thanks to the disc brakes and EBD!

CVT can be a bit annoying at times, but you get used to it. Gas tank is small, only 45 litres, which means more stops at gas stations.

I am really surprised at why this car does not sell as well as some other makes.

Would you buy another car from this manufacturer? Yes

Review Date: 10th March, 2011

2010 Suzuki SX4 JLX 2.0 from North America

Summary:

It's a tricky car!

Faults:

The CVT transmission on Auto-transmission mode goes to 6th gear on 50 KM/H, which is one of the points of CVT gears, however it causes you drive an under-powered car unless you lower the gear manually (which causes higher fuel consumption).

I'm an extremely fuel efficient driver, my cars always consume lower than company's claims on fuel consumption, however with this car, that was not the case; fuel consumption announced by the company is strongly false! I used the car in any mode you can think of, on manual transmission (standard), Automatic mode, 2WD, 4WD, and I could never drive this car with less than 12.5 L/100KM in city, which is close to my SUV's fuel consumption, while its engine size and weight wise are way smaller than my SUV.

General Comments:

The only reason that I bought this car was to lower my fuel consumption while being able to use the car in 4wd manual whenever I want. I like its paddle shifters and size of the car, but it turned out that this car consumes way more than what company has claimed, which turned me down about the car.

If you know how to change the gear manually, you can get a good power out of its engine when you need, but in Auto-transmission mode, because of its CVT transmission, you think that you are driving a 750CC-engine car, which is good actually in cities, in that you can't drive more than 50Km/hour anyhow.

The engine is quite noisy, personally I love the sound of engine, but if you like a car with no sound, it's a good idea for you to listen to the engine sound on test drive, to see if you can stand it or not.

Overall, it's not a SUV in terms of height, does everything that a light SUV should do, but consumes like a mid size SUV in the city.

Would you buy another car from this manufacturer? Don't Know

Review Date: 16th December, 2010

16th Dec 2010, 23:12

Your engine is nowhere near run in yet, so your fuel consumption will be higher. Give it another 3000-4000km and it should get better.

28th Dec 2010, 14:52

Now the car has 1400 KM on it, I've driven it in highways and for 3 short road trips in past 2 weeks. The best fuel consumption on highway was 11.3 lit/100KM on 80 KM/hour and average slightly downhill (from Whistler to Vancouver if you know the area!)

The trunk is extremely small, I hardly could fit one standard traveling suitcase (standard 23kg) in the trunk, and my carry on (standard 7kg) didn't fit and I had to put it on the back seats! It means you can't give a ride to more than 2 people to airport, since you have to fold the back seat to fit their luggage.

The engine is quite powerful, and the car is quite stable on the road.

There is something wrong with the design, that causes a problem seeing the left hand side of the car where pedestrians want to walk (or J-walk) in narrow streets. I asked two other drivers to test it, and both agreed that they can't see the pedestrians unless they move their back a little forward to make sure.

Cruise control works pretty good in this car, specially in downhills; it can maintain the speed quite well unless if it's too sharp, which no other cars (as far as I know) can.

The manual transmission mode is super sporty, and changes the car from a city under-powered car to a sporty, quite powerful car.