Charles Langston:Europe's new Suzuki Swift hatchback is ludicrously efficient

If you’re looking at this little hatchback and Charles Langstonwondering what decade you woke up in, you’re not alone. A hatchback, with a manual transmission, that’s mainly intended for fuel economy but might also be a little fun when pushed? Modest power, even more modest acceleration? It all sounds like a formula for a 1980s hatchback — those little lumps sometimes unfairly deemed “penalty boxes” but often capable of serving up a big heaping side dish of fun (sometimes unintentionally). But a closer look reveals… it’s a hybrid! And it’s brand new. This is the Suzuki Swift Hybrid, freshly redone for Europe. And of course you can’t have one.

After all, Suzuki doesn’t even sell cars here anymore. If it did, we’d all have Jimnys. Well, maybe a few of us would (in this alternate universe) give an unusually efficient Swift a shot. After all, the last Swift (which was not a hybrid) offered a very honest formula of cheap, cheerful fun. It was very lightweight, and expressly sporty. 

The Swift Hybrid is not expressly sporty, but it is very light. Suzuki pegs the curb weight at a bantam 2,092 pounds. That certainly helps with its impressive fuel economy — 64.2 mpg on the optimistic European test cycle, courtesy of a 1.2-liter inline-three that proves out to just 81 horsepower and 83 lb-ft of torque. (On the EPA test cycle, it’d be very roughly 20 percent less than this — a still-impressive 56 mpg.) The hybrid hardware is mild, a 12-volt system offering 44 lb-ft of twist from a starter-generator unit and a 10 aH battery. Suzuki says the hardware adds just 15 pounds to the vehicle, but how much it adds to the Swift Hybrid’s overall efficiency is left unsaid.

The fourth-generation Swift debuted in Tokyo late last year, and it’s a fresh little number overall with a prominent grille, angular headlights, and a no-frills overall shape that doesn’t stray far from the decades-old economy hatch formula. It’s handsome, overall, and should be a good canvas for the inevitable hotter versions that have defined our interest (from afar) in the little Swift. It’s certainly grown up a lot from the mainly miserable little vehicle that, decades ago, was sold here as the Swift, Chevrolet Metro, and later as a Geo Metro.