Superbike on four wheels

The Swift Sport is a souped-up version of the big-selling Swift.

Have you heard about the four-wheel-drive Suzuki Swift with the superbike engine? I hadn't, but it sounded like a petrolhead's dream.

Shame it's not a reality, but there will be a pint-sized four-wheel-drive car next year, and the two-wheel-drive Swift Sport on sale here from September 18 is almost as hot as that automotive urban legend implies.

It does include some technology learned via Suzuki's superbike programme - the company builds its own engines and cross-pollinates from one vehicle type to another. But it takes a lot more from the company's rally efforts.

The Swift Sport is based on the common-or-garden car that's proved so popular here - last month it sold almost double the numbers of its closest competitor in the class, Hyundai's Getz. At 952 sales so far this year, Suzuki has moved over 300 more Swifts than Honda has sold Jazz, or Daihatsu has sold Sirion, the other two to sell in big numbers.

It's a stylish, well-specced and well-priced car that does a good all-round job. Which is perhaps why it's such an obvious candidate for hotting up.

Hence this Sport, with its handling package developed from Suzuki's Junior rally car.

The suspension recipe is superficially that of the standard Swift, but considerably uprated and with Monroe shocks fitted.

There's a 1.6-litre engine in place of the 1.5, featuring modified cams and injection system for headier performance.

It's in the powerplant that the superbike influence comes in, with the oil jet cooling in the motor. Suzuki has used this system for several years, both on bikes and in its Junior World Rally cars, with the oil jet under the pistons offering in-engine cooling to augment standard water cooling.

The company references its two-wheeled success, albeit subtly, with the Sport's tachometer zero pointing straight south rather than bottom left as it usually is in cars.

The Sport also gets four-wheel disc brakes in place of the standard car's rear drums, and visual cues to the spicier performance include the body kit that makes it look lower, the Recaro seats with their inset red panels and the twin mufflers peeping from the rear.

Yet to launch outside Japan, this car's a five-door built at Suzuki's Kosai plant, with a Hungarian-built three-door version for the European market.

Would Suzuki NZ like a three-door? Its marketing general manager, Tom Peck, says not.

Peck says the five-door is seen as more practical here, and expects previous buyers of the five-door manual Swift to be prime targets, with price and performance pitted against the Peugeot 206, the Renault Clio and VW competition.

Suzuki is tight-lipped about performance. But Peck says: "Only the Polo GTi, which is a 1.8, and the 2.0-litre Renault Clio offer more performance. It'll have more power than the performance Peugeot or the Citroen C2 VTS."

Will the manual-only format be a problem? General manager of Renault NZ, Robert Nash, thinks it might be. His Clio hasn't sold well this year because of a supply shortage in the lead-up to the third generation of Renaults small car. But last year he sold 10 standard cars for every 2.0-litre hottie.

"Bear in mind the hot ones were manual and we didn't have a Tiptronic available," says Nash. "That's a problem. People want hot hatches but they also want an auto, which is why the Polo is successful."

Except that the Polo GTi is also manual-only. Volkswagen NZ general manager Dean Sheed doesn't see it as a problem, although he says it's important in larger cars like the Golf.

"We sold 25 of the manual Golf GTi year to date and 140 DSG versions, with 20 manual R32 Golfs to 70 with the DSG double-clutch auto."

But Polo is available only in a manual - surely that's problematic?

"I don't think so. People buy Golf-sized hot hatches as multi-role cars - fun, but they have to carry the family," says Sheed. "But Polo-size cars people buy to please themselves."

Thus a third of Polo sales year-to-date are of the hooligan GTi in manual only. Good news for Nash, whose Clio 3 arrives next February with the RS197 hottie a month later.

Good news for Suzuki too, with the Swift Sport also in five-speed manual only.

For all the Polo GTi's popularity, the tiny hotties don't sell in large numbers.

So forget hot hatches - this Swift Sports just holding the fort for the four-wheel-drive SX4. Suzuki has just announced this SUV-hatch hybrid will underpin its move from Junior WRC to a full-scale assault on the World Rally stage in January 2008.

Europe already gets its locally-built SX4 in two or four-wheel-drive - a switchable three-mode four-wheel-drive system with an electric coupling to drive all four wheels.

That drive will come from a 1.6-litre petrol engine offering 6.1l/100km fuel economy, astonishing from any four-paw car. Unfortunately we won't get Europe's diesel option because of our ethanol regulations, which allow 10 per cent of the biofuel.

"We'd love to have it," says Peck, "but the 2WD diesel is rated to E3, the Japanese standard, and though ethanol isn't on sale here our E10 regulation means that car is not available to us."

But we will get the SX4 in four-wheel drive, from February 2007.