Suzuki Swift - Boot space, comfort & practicality

As with most small cars these days, the Suzuki Swift comes in five-door form only, with seating for five at a pinch. It’s quite spacious up front, with a high roof and upright windscreen giving the impression you’re in something bigger than you actually are. Moving the seat into the right position, regardless of your build, is little hassle. You can pump the seat up and down with the standard height adjustment, and there’s plenty of travel in the chair to allow taller occupants to stretch out. However, you’ll need to go for a top-of-the-range Ultra trim if you want to adjust the height of the seatbelt.

The front door bins are reasonably slim, but they have an area at their leading edge shaped to hold a drinks bottle, which makes them a useful cubby. The two cup-holders in the centre of the dash are a little too shallow, while a third one sits behind the handbrake for rear-seat passengers to use. The smartphone cubby and the glovebox are a little too small to be useful, though.

Visibility is good, thanks to large windows, and all versions come with rear parking sensors and a reversing camera to assist when backing into a space at the supermarket.

Dimensions and size

The Suzuki Swift is one of the smallest superminis in its class. At only 3,860mm long and 1,735mm wide, it's significantly shorter and narrower than a Skoda Fabia, Vauxhall Corsa, and Volkswagen Polo. It is taller than all those rivals, though, at 1,495mm for the standard Swift, and 1,520mm for the four-wheel drive ALLGRIP version - due to its extra ground clearance.

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Seats, leg room, head room & passenger space

Head and legroom in the back of the Swift are reasonable for the class, but taller passengers might find the seat design quite flat, with a base that’s a little too close to the floor, which means there’s not much support for thighs. There isn’t much space to slide your feet under the seat in front, making the Swift feel a bit cramped. Being a small car, the cabin in the Swift is relatively narrow, but you can still fit someone in the central position because the middle seat is quite soft, and the hump in the floor is fairly low. 

As with most superminis, there are two ISOFIX child seat mounting points provided on the rear seats' outer positions.

Boot space

The Suzuki Swift's boot only has 265 litres of load space, which is some way below the class best. It’s about the size of the MG3, but it can’t match the whopping 380 litres of space you’ll find in a Skoda Fabia. On the plus side, there’s less of a load lip than you’ll find in an MG3, but you can’t get an adjustable height boot floor as you can get in a Volkswagen Polo, and there’s only a small amount of underfloor storage in the Swift.

Fold the 60/40 split folding rear bench down and you’ll find 589 litres of space, which is less than half of the 1,190 litres you’ll get in a Fabia.