by Richard Harley

Created on: January 17, 2009

Underpowered and lumpy. That's how I would describe this vehicle during my 5 month ownership period. Suzuki introduced the Grand Vitara to replace the tired and boxy looking Vitara, which was well past it's sell by date. There's no doubt it's an improvement, but then again it should be, almost anything would have been an improvement. Let's not bother with the history and design of this car - it's all rather boring. What we have here is a soft roader that places itself somewhere in between a Freelander and Honda CRV, competing almost directly with the latter.

Suzuki offered a choice of engines, the best being the one I'll review - the V6 model with a measly 142bhp. Of course, if you're on a budget the 2.0 diesel would be the one to go for, if you can stomach it. The V6 is a group 13 insurance car. I'm not too sure how that happened. Perhaps it was a mistake by a new member of staff working for the company that decides these groupings. The V6 feels very slow. It might not be that slow. I never really looked the the speedo because I knew it was pretty slow. My BMW 525i is a group 15 car, and to compare the two is laughable, yet they are only 2 insurance groups apart.

The styling of the Grand Vitara is what I would describe as funky-chic. It looks tame and friendly and from the side not too bad at all. The interior is basic but functional with all the right things in the right places. AC and ABS are not standard on the 2000 model, which is slightly alarming, but never mind, I'm sure Suzuki have caught up in the real world now. At this point I should mention the seat cloth. The colour I had was a pasty yellow/grey and wouldn't win any design awards, even in Bulgaria. The seats aren't that comfortable either and are only adjustable in a few different ways. Maybe I'm going off track, but if a softroader is going to bridge the gap between a normal saloon car and a proper offroader, it needs to lose the chunky offroader interior.

Mechanically, the car is reliable. I didn't have any problems in 5 months of ownership although the vehicle only had 63k miles by the time I'd had enough, so you wouldn't expect it to. But the V6 'range topping' engine just didn't deliver. This is a heavy car weighing in at nearly 1500kg and you'd expect the 2.5 litre engine to handle that. In reality, the low down torque just isn't used in everyday driving. Fine if your ploughing across fields in a remote farm, but then you would have bought a Defender, wouldn't you? With three passengers, performance

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