REVIEW: Suzuki Jimny 5-Door is now more useable, and still an adventure on wheels

If I had a coin for every time I heard someone say “I want a Jimny!” I would probably have collected enough to buy one.

And of course I doubt anyone has ever said: “I think I should buy a Jimny because it will be a practical and sensible option.”

It’s diminutive. It looks like a real 4x4. It is a real 4x4. And it’s not hard to understand why everybody wants one.

But there are downsides which are well documented, in that it’s not as comfortable to drive as other equivalently priced SUVs and crossovers and, well, it’s always been really cramped. Because diminutive.

But the five-door version that was launched in late 2023 aims to address that latter drawback. In brief, Suzuki stretched the wheelbase by 340mm, allowing them to squeeze in two extra doors and increase the boot volume from 211 litres to a far more useful 332 litres.

And in my humble opinion it looks even better in five-door form, and far from resembling an afterthought. It’s a bit like.. “honey, who shrunk the G-wagen?” and I don’t even like the latter very much, but somehow what Suzuki did here really resonates.

Subjective matters aside, it is of course more practical and more usable. I recently spent a month with the Jimny five-door and was surprised by how usable it was for everyday errands. I could also sit comfortably behind myself in the back seats.

The boot is deep and capable of fitting taller items, although the 50:50 split back seats don't fold completely flat and the horizontally hinged tailgate is perhaps not as user-friendly in tight spaces as a conventional vertical boot.

There are a few other ergonomic niggles. For instance, the steering wheel is not adjustable for reach and there aren’t many storage spaces in the cabin for everyday items like your keys and phone - and those front door pockets are really tiny.

But the five-door is significantly more usable than its smaller sibling. If in the past the Jimny felt cramped for a two-person family, it now comfortably accommodates such a household, and at a push it could perhaps even serve as a family car.

The rest of the Jimny recipe is largely unaltered. The extra weight does have an impact on performance but it didn’t feel noticeably slower to me, despite the unchanged 75kW and 130Nm normally aspirated 1.5-litre engine having a lot to deal with in its life. Driving a Jimny does require some patience, and you will need to exercise caution when attempting to overtake on the open road. Yet in everyday urban driving it did not feel frustratingly slow to me, although our test unit was well run in, with over 20,000km on the clock.

The longer wheelbase also makes the Jimny five-door more stable on the road, and through corners, although it is somewhat susceptible to crosswinds.

It is still somewhat agricultural in the way it drives, with the manual gearbox in the GLX version I drove having a relatively long throw. The gearbox and transfer case are also somewhat noisy, but there’s a certain charm to driving the Jimny that just doesn’t exist with all these other modern cookie-cutter crossovers with their 20 million-inch touchscreens.

It somehow manages to make every journey feel like an adventure, even when you’re just heading to the shops.

And when you do take it off the beaten track, the Jimny will take you places none of its rivals would ever dream of venturing, thanks to its AllGrip 4x4 system with low-range transfer case and electronic diff lock simulator, as well as its impressive 210mm ground clearance.

The five-door is perhaps not quite as manoeuvrable over rocky trail surfaces as its shorter sibling, owing to its relatively long wheelbase significantly reducing the breakover angle from 28 degrees to 24 degrees, but it's still highly impressive.

In the greater scheme of things, the Jimny has become a more sensible purchase in its five-door configuration, but it’s still not what you’d call a sensible purchase. And that’s one of the things I love about it.

The Suzuki Jimny 1.5 GLX 5-Door manual is priced at R457,900.

PS: You can now paint a clay model of the Jimny at the Clay Cafe, which has branches in Cape Town, Paarl, George, Pretoria and Lanseria.

IOL