Swift Sport 136ps

Fun, fun, fun!

I bought this car pre-registered and it's the newest car I've ever owned. Having transferred ownership of the family sized car to my wife, I wanted something I could enjoy driving again, but it needed to be practical enough for short trips with the family, excluding all the two-seaters I might have preferred.

I drove a number of small warm hatchbacks, but the little Swift clicked almost immediately. It's an absolute laugh to drive, fast enough, with truly superb handling and cornering capability, along with reasonable ride comfort.

I drive around 23000 miles per year and the Swift, with it's 6-speed gearbox and comprehensive list of standard equipment makes my daily motorway commute very pleasant. Useful standard features like Bluetooth are brilliant.

In the summer the scenic route home, on the A roads and back roads leaves me with a Cheshire cat grin for the entire journey!

The car is also reasonably economical given it's quite retro engineering, with relaxed commuting I've achieved 48.6 MPG (calculated - the on-dash fuel consumption is notoriously inaccurate), and when having a lot of fun with the car on the red line, my worst consumption on a tank is around 30mpg.

The car does need to be revved to enjoy it, but that's part of the fun, it seems to enjoy that 7200 RPM redline.

Service intervals are short, and there's a wide variety of services, which vary in price considerably, but then I also take the view that a car that's getting fresh oil every 9000 miles should be in tip-top condition for years to come.

Boot space is modest, with a high lip, but it's good for several bags of shopping which is all I need.

In short, I can't think of a car I'd rather own, there may be faster hot hatches out there, but with this one I can use all of it's power, more of the time, and a after a blast down a country lane I can still keep my wing mirrors with it's relatively petite size.

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