FIRSTDRIVE SUZUKI ALTO: Two large Irishmen put egos aside in Rome as they strap themselves into the pint-sized Alto, writes PADDY COMYN
SUZUKI’S NEW Alto will find the going tough as it enters a suddenly crowded city car segment.
Press conferences involving Japanese car firms can be tough going at the best of times.
Well-meaning executives, flown over from head office, read scripts from the autocue phonetically, syllable by syllable. There usually isn’t an open eye in the house.
Thank heaven for espresso then as Suzuki launched their latest offering, the Indian-built Alto in Rome, Italy.
We are starting to see a trend. If you have a small car and you want it to look cool, then launch it in Italy. Italians, and especially Romans, make small cars look better than anyone else.
And that’s because they make some of the best small cars in history. And supercars. Everything else in between is a bit shaky.
In Italy the Smart car still has a huge following, Toyota look like they will have a hit on their hands with the diminutive iQ and flag-waving Italians are now driving the new Fiat 500 in various different colours adorned with various different emblems.
Many of these cars are driven by young, vibrant, fashionable lunatics. Driving in Rome has always been, and remains, an exercise in steel-bending determination.
It is only natural then for Suzuki would launch their new Alto, their smallest of small cars at just 3.5m long, in Italy.
The promotional video had a league of nations fawning over a surreptitiously parked Alto in Rome. It all looked marvellous.
Quite how a rose pink Alto will go down in Dublin is another thing.
Suzuki has a long history of making good small cars and the Swift is no exception to that rule – it’s probably one of the best superminis on the market. This has since been joined by the taller Splash. The Alto sits as the baby of the family and has come in various shapes and sizes.
This new model will also be a Nissan Pixo and the aim here is to be small, cute and low-emission. All three boxes are ticked.
The Alto has the sort of doe-eyed look that you usually see on ads for the ISPCA dog appeal near Christmas. It’s dinky and with just 103g/km of emissions it will be almost as cheap to run as a bicycle.
There are plenty of caveats.
The doors feel flimsy and the cabin is awash with the sort of plastics we haven’t seen since the 1990s.
There is a difference between a cheap car and one that offers good value.
The engine is a new 3-cylinder unit, with 62bhp and as you can imagine with two strapping journalists on board it never really felt urgent. 0-100km/h takes a clock-watching 14 seconds but that’s a whisper faster than it takes a Toyota Aygo. The steering is vague but ideal for around town where this car feels easy to park and agile enough to cope with Rome’s kamikaze drivers. We are not entirely sure what the average Italian male made of a large Louthman and a large Corkman sitting shoulder to shoulder in a pink Alto, but it seemed to be a mixture of amusement and fury.
The space will be fine for most average-sized adults and the fact that this is a four-door car where many of its rivals, such as the Ka, are just three-door models might give it something of an advantage.
Boot space of 129-litres is 10 litres less than the Aygo 5 door and much less than the 224 litres offered by Ford’s Ka or 225-litres offered by the excellent Hyundai i10.
It will be well equipped: air conditioning is standard and teh car features front, side and curtain airbags. You can also have ESP, which will cost around €700. Suzuki claim you won’t find another car in the A-segment where air conditioning is thrown in.
This segment hasn’t dropped as harshly as the rest of the market, down 47 per cent compared to last year, with some really good offerings in and around the €12,000 mark.
The Toyota Aygo, Citroen C1 and Peugeot 107 are all good cars, but the new Ford Ka, Kia Picanto and Hyundai i10 are as good as cars in a class above. The Alto will find it hard to compete with these vehicles.
The i10 and Ka in particular feel more substantial than the Alto and while air conditioning may be absent in both there certainly is room to move on discounts, as we pointed out in Motors last week.
As a city car, the Alto does exactly what it says on the tin – it just feels a little bit too much like the tin.
We will wait to pass full judgment until next month when the car arrives in Ireland, but it lands in a segment that is very different to the past, when the previous Alto occupied a small loyal following. The decision by Nissan to delay the arrival of the Pixo, a sister car to the Alto, means that Suzuki have an opportunity to steal some sales in a depressed market.
An automatic version which will reside in tax band B will be available for €13,295 but most sales will be made up of the €11,500 1.0-litre manual version. Expect to see it in showrooms in the second week of April.
Factfile: Suzuki Alto
Engine: 996cc 4-cylinder putting out 62bhp @6,000rpm and 90Nm torque at 3,400rpm
0-100km/h: 14 seconds
Maximum Speed: 155km/h
CO2 Emissions:103g/km
Road Tax Band: A/€104 per annum
Price: €11,500
A vailable:April 2009