Suzuki Fronx review: Baby crossover nails one claim
Suzuki’s new baby crossover is a rudimentary car made contemporary, but what it needs is charm
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[SINGAPORE] The Suzuki Fronx comes from a car company that I have a soft spot for, a plucky underdog that filled our world with attainable and characterful cars such as the Swift, the Vitara, the Jimny, the eccentric Wagon R and more.
Suzuki’s engineering department always seemed to punch above its weight, creating off-roaders that could follow a Land Rover anywhere, and masterfully conjuring big space from little cars. They even made the fastest production motorcycle in the world.
My feelings are also personal. My first car was a Suzuki Cappuccino, an ingenious roadster so tiny it had practically zero room for shopping bags, which saved me from women who disqualified me as a potential mate on those grounds.
So yes, I badly want to like the Fronx.
It might sound like it was named after the noise an alien makes when it sneezes, but think of it as a sort of “Swift plus” that sits at the centre of a few overlapping circles: Japanese brand, combustion power, sport utility vehicle (SUV).
The slightly larger Toyota Yaris Cross, a common sight on the road, occupies the same spot, but those who find it too expensive should consider the Fronx a small step down.
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It also feels like a small step back in time. It has a big, trigger-style gear lever, analogue gauges, and buttons galore, all of which make operating it feel more like driving a car than piloting a smartphone.
It’s not wholly stuck in the past, of course. It has a nine-inch touchscreen that functions mainly as a home for Apple CarPlay (wireless) or Android Auto (wired) to do their thing. It also comes with a Head Up Display, a 360-degree parking camera and a wireless charging pad.
In a nod to spirited driving, it has a sport mode, and the six-speed auto even comes with paddle shifters – the one and only thing the Fronx has in common with a Ferrari.
That’s it for frills. You’ll have to live with manual seats and manual wipers, and while the cabin’s use of brown adds a nice aesthetic touch, when you actually touch the plastics you get an instant reminder of the Fronx’s budget positioning. The rear loses headroom to the rakish roofline, and there are no rear air-con vents. Blind spot monitors would have been nice.
On the plus side, while the boot looks tiny on paper at 304 litres, it’s deep enough to handle an airport run, and the folding rear seats mean you won’t have to leave an Ikea empty-handed.
At the opposite end of the car is a decently peppy 1.5-litre engine, with hybrid tech so mild that it is to motors what Maggi is to chilli sauce. The system isn’t all that frugal, but it does what it promises. The official consumption figure is 6.5 L/100 km, and in real-world driving I managed, wouldn’t you know it, 6.5 L/100 km.
My main gripe about driving the Fronx is that it doesn’t do any one thing well, except breeze through U-turns and tight spaces, courtesy of a 4.8-metre turning radius. Otherwise, the roadholding isn’t tenacious, the steering is leisurely, and the suspension sometimes feels like the factory installed springs from a lorry.
Overall, the Suzuki feels like something that started out small and rudimentary, then was made as contemporary as possible with the addition of a touchscreen and some driver assistance systems.
It does have lane-keep assistance and adaptive cruise control, both of which work well, but even so, there is a perfunctory quality to the Fronx that runs through it like a leitmotif of boxes ticked. What kind of collision warning system flashes up “Dual Sensor Brake Support” instead of something more along the lines of “Eyes on the road, fool”? You can forgive a bit of crudeness in a small car, but not charmlessness.
It’s tough to forgive the price, too. The Fronx draws a S$22,500 Vehicular Emissions Scheme surcharge, which is money you pay upfront but never see again, since it doesn’t add to deregistration rebates. With it, the price climbs to S$176,888, putting the Fronx in the neighbourhood of bigger, more feature-packed electric cars. I may have a soft spot for Suzuki, but at that money, acting on it would be hard.
Suzuki Fronx 1.5L Dualjet Hybrid Engine 1,462 cc, in-line four mild hybrid Power 102 hp at 6,000 rpm Torque 137 Nm at 4,400 rpm Gearbox Six-speed automatic Top speed 165 kmh 0 to 100 kmh 11 seconds (estimated) Fuel efficiency 6.5 L/100 km Agent Champion Motors Price S$176,888 with Certificate of Entitlement Available Now
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