Please welcome to another edition of As The Hype Turns, and this week is a very special episode. Today we see the new Suzuki Jimny, as it is gushed upon by two weird car nerds, one of which is a Land Rover obsessive. Is the Jimny good? By their accounts, yes.
This is Smith and Sniff, the charming little show by Jonny Smith you know from Fifth Gear and Richard Porter you know as a writer on That-One-That’s-Not-A-Gear. Smith is understandably into the Jimny as he owns not only a diminutive retro Japanese car already (a Pike Car Nissan Figaro) and also another even smaller similarly utilitarian mega-compact (a Fiat 126).
Porter, by contrast, recently spent too much money on a final-edition Land Rover Defender, and has a good sense of what is or is not good in the world of “4x4s” as they say in the UK.
As it turns out, they were not alone in loving the Jimny even before they drove it. Spouses, officemates who didn’t care about cars, even James May instantly looked at the Jimny and recognized that It Was Good, as Smith and Porter explain. Few cars at the Grand Tour office brooked so much anticipation as the Jimny, apparently.
Smith and Porter find the car comfortable enough and powerful enough even with just a 1.5-liter naturally-aspirated four up front. More than that, it’s the sense of build quality that permeates the car that makes them love it when they drive it. Other car reviewers complain of it sitting at 4,000 RPM on the highway. Porter, a Suzuki Swift Sport owner, thinks Suzuki builds engines tough enough to handle it.
Before we at Jalopnik can give a definitive verdict on this little ladder-frame vehicle, we’ll have to drive it ourselves. That may take a while, as our current plan to shoot our own Jeep obsessive David Tracy to Japan via a giant cannon has been quashed by the FAA. We will get back to our original tunnel boring idea as soon as we can, but Elon isn’t returning our calls.