SA Road Tests

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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here probably applies to the models you can get at home.
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*Please remember too, that prices quoted were those ruling on the days I wrote the reports.


We tread lightly through the boondocks in the 2012 Suzuki Jimny

Pics by Megan@Motorpics

Minimum gadgets, maximum fun

Published in The Witness Motoring on Wednesday September 12, 2012

Let's deal with the July 2012 cosmetic revamp first.  Briefly, the bonnet gains a power bulge to make it look more macho, the grille sports bolder vertical bars and squarer apertures, the front bumper is more aggressive with a bigger air intake, the fog lamps were resited to protect them better and a front scuff plate was added. Redesigned head restraints provide improved support while those in the rear now allow the seat backs to be laid down without needing to be removed first. Seat cloth was upgraded too.

So what is this Suzuki Jimny mini SUV anyway? Imagine a tiny two-door Japanese version of the Land Rover Defender; no self-locking of doors as you drive away, no automatic windscreen wipers or headlamps that turn themselves on, no parking beepers, no air suspension and no brainy on-demand all-wheel drive. In plain English, you get no flab and very little in the way of troublesome electronics.

What you do get is a pair of coil-sprung live axles with plenty of articulation, high range four-wheel drive that can be selected at speeds up to 100 km/h and low range that requires you to stop first. Nothing unusual there - all makes need you to do that. You also get impressive approach, departure and rampover angles with fair ground clearance and 15" alloy wheels fitted with practical, 70-profile rubber. All this is driven by a perky little 1300 cc motor that gets its power down by means of a five-speed manual gearbox. Luckily, this shifts cleanly and easily because you need to keep revs up to get the best out of the engine.  
                                                                              
Standard equipment includes a single channel air conditioner, powered front windows and outside mirrors, roof rails, a simple RDS radio with CD player, ISOFix anchorages, ABS, two airbags and front fog lamps.

Being light and small, it turns tightly, doesn't get bogged down easily and sometimes even allows an easier, alternative way around obstacles. Because it has suspension straight off a small truck, it rides like one, but maintains course on rough roads better than some pickups. It's easy to forgive any slight roughness though, because it's such a light-hearted little vehicle that you can't help yourself.

Drawbacks? There are a few. The luggage space, at 113 litres with seatbacks up and 324 litres with them folded is, frankly, small. Back bench seating is best kept for small children and the window glass is fixed. It would probably be better to reserve one's Jimny for couples' lost weekends and use the rear compartment for camping gear and supplies.

Although off-road work is this little SUV's reason for being, it works well as a city car too. Big, square windows let you see exactly what's going on around you, squared fenders mark the front corners and the spare wheel, visible through the back screen, tells you precisely where the vehicle ends. As for those parking beepers listed as 'missing' earlier, Jimny doesn't actually need any.

Finally, the engine is reasonably quiet and its doors are solid, so unlike the off-roader named above, you can still hear your music at cruising speeds.

The numbers
Price: R198 900
Engine: Suzuki M13AA - 1328cc, DOHC, 16-valve VVT, four-cylinder
Power: 63 kW at 6000 rpm
Torque: 110 Nm at 4100 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 13,7 seconds
Maximum speed: 145 km/h
Fuel consumption: About 8,6 l/100 km
Tank: 40 litres
Ground clearance: 190 mm
Approach/departure/rampover angles: 37/46/31 degrees
Warranty: 3 years/100 000 km, with roadside assistance
Service plan: 4 years/60 000 km, at 15 000 km intervals

We drove the new 1500 cc update in March, 2019



What We Do

This is a one-man show, which means that road test cars entrusted to me are driven only by me. Some reviewers hand test cars over to their partners to use as day-to-day transport and barely experience them for themselves.

What this means to you is that every car reviewed is given my own personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every car goes through real world testing; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.

My articles appear every Wednesday in the motoring pages of The Witness, South Africa's oldest continuously running newspaper, and occasionally on Saturdays in Weekend Witness as well. I drive eight to ten vehicles most months of the year (press cars are withdrawn over the festive season - wonder why?) so not everything gets published in the paper. Those that are, get a tagline but the rest is virgin, unpublished and unedited by the political-correctness police. Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so they can see I do actually exist.

I am based in Pietermaritzburg, KZN, South Africa. This is the central hub of the KZN Midlands farming community; the place farmers go to buy their supplies and equipment, truck their goods to market, send their kids to school and go to kick back and relax.
So occasionally a cow, a goat or a horse may add a little local colour by finding its way into the story or one of the pictures. It's all part of the ambience!

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