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Posted February, 2007

Road Test: 2007 Suzuki Forenza

By Thomas E. Bonsall

Suzuki is one of those car companies to which most prospects don't give much thought. Studies have indicated that when most people shop for a new car or truck, they don't look at all the brands but concentrate their attention on perhaps half-a-dozen. The trick, therefore, for a manufacturer, is to make it onto that short list. This is why brand equity is so important and why life is so much easier for brands like Toyota and Chevrolet that have a lot of it, and so much more difficult for brands like Suzuki that don't.

Take our test car, the Suzuki Forenza. If Honda built it, they would probably sell five or ten times as many of them as Suzuki will. More's the pity because the Forenza is at least equal to Honda's Civic by any objective evaluation.

First, the basics. Our test car carried a base sticker price of $14,999. For this modest sum you get a very nicely equipped car with air conditioning, power everything, a decent sound system and one of the best warranties in the business: 100,000 miles, no deductible, fully transferable for seven years.

The engine is a 2-liter, in-line four rated at 127 horsepower and our car had the four-speed automatic transmission. That's not a huge amount of horsepower, but the Forenza performed well and never seemed to run out of breath even with three full-grown adults on board. The transmission operated smoothly and, in general, the Forenza was just a sweet car to drive. The ride and handling was more than adequate for a car in this market segment, too.

We liked the styling, both outside and in. The interior was very comfortable and roomy, even the back seat — which is not always the case in this market segment. The Forenza has a solid feel to it, as well.

There were a couple of features we didn't like. Given the way the power door locks were set-up, you had to unlock all the doors using the power door lock switch before you could open any door from the inside. With most cars these days, pulling on the door handle (at least for front seat passengers) will automatically unlock the door and undo the latch. On some brands, you have to pull twice: once to unlock the door and then a second time to undo the latch. But, either way, you can do it all with the door handle. We thought the Suzuki system was unnecessarily inconvenient but doubtless something an owner would get used to very quickly.

The remote key fob was another matter. It is poorly designed to the extent that in the dark you can't tell which side is the top and which is the bottom because there is no tactile distinction between them. So when approaching the car after dark, we were always fumbling with the fob trying to figure out which side was up. Suzuki needs to do something about this. Other than that, the system worked well.

The remote key fob (at $150) was one of only two options on our test car. The other was cruise control ($200). The final sticker including destination charges came in at $15,349, which is not a lot of money for a very nice car.

If you are looking for a basic economy sedan, you would do yourself a favor to check out the Forenza. R&D