Our month with Suzuki’s Jimny SUV takes us down into Waikato River trails – and delivers a couple of ‘teachable moments’.
The river is very full, mud-coloured, with occasional lumps of grass and even a small tree heading downstream. It’s the effect of days of rain in the river’s many upstream tributaries, and it can take three or more days to clear.
Our favourite tracks, too, are wet and muddy and almost impassable in a couple of places. We select 4-lo, which turns off stability control, and switch off parking sensors. The latter tend to get over-stimulated on tracks like these.
This was always going to be interesting on the Jimny’s Bridgestone Dueler H/L tyres, which are very urban. That’s fine for most of a Jimny’s life, but for offroad adventure, a more aggressive tread is desirable.
On these slippery tracks, an all-terrain tyre would be reassuring. The mud doesn’t stop us, but it does make progress a bit ‘squirelly’. The tyres have loaded up with Waikato mud and look like slicks. Jimny’s 4WD system copes with the patchy grip, but there is more wheel-twirling than we’d like.
Jimny’s advantage here is its light weight. There’s no 4WD SUV on the New Zealand market that matches its 1200kg kerb weight. Some other key numbers: Jimny measures 1725mm in height, 3965mm in length, 1645mm in width with a 2590mm wheelbase. More relevant to today’s drive are its 210mm ground clearance, 36-degree approach angle and 47-degree departure angle – especially in the rock and roll of the cut-up bits of track, and in the ease of placement as we back out of areas chewed up by previous visitors with giant mud tyres. Jimny makes offroad work super simple.
Even better, the five door is a decent way to take the kids along on a drive – and there’s more cargo space behind the rear seats than is the case with the three-door version.
On or off the road, the Jimny’s short overhangs and ‘wheel-at-each-corner’ stance make it a pleasure to drive and park.
Jimny’s engine is shared with a couple of previous generations of Suzuki’s mighty mini, the Swift. Like those Swifts, it has 75kW at 6,000rpm – so unlike all those big lazy diesels, the Jimny does rev. Maximum torque is 130Nm, made at a fairly high 4,000rpm – so again, keeping the engine up the rev range is important offroad. We found ourselves using low range a lot on this drive, which made it easier to be in the right rev range even at crawler speeds.
Fuel economy is a work in progress. When we picked up the vehicle it was showing an average figure of 8.2l/100km. In the first week, in a mix of urban, motorway and dune driving, we edged that down to 8.0. Now we are in the high sevens, so the official figure of 6.9l/100km should be achievable without resorting to the old economy run ‘hacks’ – leaving air-con off, pootling around at 70km/h, taking a half hour to get up to 100km/h. That’s including the offroad sessions, which always drag figures down. Impressive.
Heading home, we drop onto the motorway at the Bombay Hill on-ramp. Jimny gets up to 100km/h on the on-ramp, making the merge into traffic easy. At that speed, it’s doing 3,000rpm. A wee bit busy, but not intolerable.
In the dusk, we flick Jimny’s LED headlights on and they’re dim. Very dim. Strangely dim. Aha, lightbulb moment. Toggle the switch for headlight washers and bright light is restored. Not bad at all, a lot of 4WDs twice the price don’t get headlight washers.
Teachable moment 1: this is one of a very few ‘real’ SUVs on the market that is powered by a petrol engine. Have we all become a bit too comfortable with turbodiesel engines and their mountains of torque? The Jimny’s 1.5-litre engine is more responsive than any diesel, and it does ask that the driver stay engaged with what they are doing, on or off the road. The lost art of staying in the best rev range for power is key to offroading, as is maintaining momentum. Once that mental adjustment has been made, Jimny’s 4WD system offers great benefits in the slip and slide of muddy riverside trails.
Teachable moment 2: it’s always better to use judgement and common sense on new trails. The mud-tyred beasts had fun in here before us, and in places they have chewed out massive ruts, leaving six inches of muddy slop in the bottom of their wheel tracks. Those ruts are deeper than the Jimny’s static clearance – its diff ends up rubbing on the ridge between the ruts and we find ourselves with the front wheels dangling in mid-air. Thank goodness for 4-lo and our luck, we are able to reverse slowly away from the chewed-up track and make a turn across onto another piece of track that’s less blitzed.
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