December 13, 2006 - We do our best to ensure that each one of our car reviews exists "in a vacuum". In an ideal world, we'd be able to maintain a laser-like focus on each individual car and write about it without thoughts of other machines clouding our minds. However, as we hop into a brand-new ride each and every week, it's incredibly hard not to compare the "new new car" with the new car we just got out of. Hey - we're only human. Why bring this up? Well, it's because immediately prior to our picking up the Suzuki SX4, we spent a week in the excellent-in-every-way Audi A3 S Line. Both cars are small, all-wheel drive 5-door hatches, and in a way, these cars are kind of in the same class (as far as size and drivetrain, at least). Yeah, we know it's not fair to compare a near $40K car to a $15K car - especially before we even hop into the $15K machine - but we can't help the fact that we hopped into the Suzuki expecting to be disappointed. So imagine our genuine and honest surprise when we discovered that the Suzuki SX4 is a pretty damn good car. We mean, this car is on a whole 'nother level when compared to Suzuki's other offerings - like the rebadged Daewoos in the company's line-up (we're looking at you, Reno and Forenza). The past Suzukis we've driven, while pleasant cars, felt kind of cheap and flimsy. Of course, that's because they were cheap; we weren't expecting them to have the vault-like feel of a Mercedes. But this new SX4... it actually feels like a solid and respectable car. Furthermore, and we mean this in the best way possible, it feels normal. For a company known more for its sport bikes than its cars, having a solid "normal" car is a big deal. The SX4 shows that Suzuki is a real car company that builds real cars. Excuse us for a minute... we still can't get over just what an improvement this car is over past models.
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