• Passenger room is competitive with its supermini rivals
• Boot not the biggest in the sector
• Low seating position not for everyone

How much space is there?

This generation of Suzuki Swift is quite short by the standards of the supermini class, but its surprisingly spacious inside. Headroom is particularly good and there’s enough space in the rear for two passengers to travel in reasonable comfort. Taller passengers sitting behind lanky drivers might find their knees graze the front seat back, though.

There isn’t really enough space in the rear for three passengers. It’s fine for short hops, but you wouldn’t want to travel the length of the country that way unless you’re on very good terms with your benchmates. It’s also worth noting that rear electric windows are only available on the range-topping SZ5 and Sport specifications.

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Space up front is much more generous. Elbow room is good and headroom is stellar. The Swift also feels larger than it is thanks to its wide windows. Suzuki hasn’t carved swathes out of the glass with angular pillars or upswept styling lines (like you’ll find on the DS 3) which allows plenty of light to enter the cabin.

Boot space and storage

The Swift’s boot is less impressive than its interior. It measures a paltry 265 litres, which places it towards the bottom of its class below the Renault Clio, Skoda Fabia, Dacia Sandero and Kia Rio. It also has a high loading lip, which makes hauling heavy objects into the rear more difficult than it should be.

Fold the rear seats flat and maximum space increases to 579 litres. The rear seat back also folds in a 60/40 split, which means you have the option to carry both passengers and luggage if you need to. However, the seats don’t fold completely flat. There’s a step between the boot floor and the folded seat back, which makes it tricky to load long, delicate items (such as TVs, lamps or mirrors) safely.

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Oddment storage is good, though. There’s an impressive array of cubbies dotted around the cabin, including a smartphone tray and two cupholders under the climate controls. Every door card also comes with a drinks holder that’s large enough to house litre-sized water bottles.

Is it easy to park?

Rather unusually, even the most basic Swift SZ-L comes with a rear-view parking camera as standard. Normally this is a toy reserved for the more expensive models in a car’s range. The camera’s image is a little grainy, but it does feature some handy distance markers to help you gauge how far away obstacles are.

Step up to the mid-range SZ-T model and you gain rear parking sensors, which are nice to have but not a necessity. The Swift is simple enough to park the old fashioned way because it’s small and easy to see out of. It also has a tight turning circle and light controls, which means you won’t work up a sweat steering it around a multi-storey car park.

Safety

• SZ-L model has a three-star safety rating
• Rises to four stars for SZ-T cars and up
• Basic car misses out on active safety kit

Euro NCAP crash tested the Suzuki Swift back in 2017. It awarded the most basic SZ-L model a three star safety rating, while mid-range SZ-T cars and up received a four-star score for their additional active safety technology.

Don’t let that three-star score put you off, though. Euro NCAP’s ratings place a lot of emphasis on safety technology so, despite the fact that the Swift’s structure and physical safety equipment performed better than average in crash tests, it’s lack of active driver assistance tech dragged down its overall score.

However, the price difference between the cheapest SZ-L and mid-range SZ-T model is only £2,500, so it isn’t too expensive to get your hands on the extra equipment. We reckon it’s well-worth spending that money, too, because it brings lane-keeping assist, traffic sign recognition, autonomous emergency braking and weaving alert, which will warn to the driver to take a break if it senses the car wandering around on the road.

More commonplace safety equipment like airbags (six of them to be precise), Isofix points (two lots of those for the rear seats), adaptive cruise control, child locks, a tyre pressure monitoring system and electronic stability control are standard on all cars.

Watch the Suzuki Swift Euro NCAP crash test video