Suzuki Ignis Review (2016-present)
Suzuki Ignis cars for sale
3.0
Expert review
Pros
Easy to drive around town
Lively 1.2-litre engine
Cute and unusual looks
Cons
Plasticky cabin
Very small boot
Noisy on a long drive
The CarGurus verdict
The Suzuki Ignis is far from perfect. Its slightly plasticky interior, fiddly infotainment system, occasionally bouncy ride quality and small boot all count against it. But then again, this is a cheap car, and given the price, some of those faults are forgivable, even more so when you factor in how much fun the Ignis is.
This is a car with immense character, and that means you find yourself looking past the flaws and instead enjoying the cute looks, perky engine and dinky dimensions, not to mention the low running costs and versatile rear seating.
If you’re after a fun, town-friendly car that’s a little left-field, then, the Ignis is worth a look. Just don’t expect to offer the same sort of quality as some more expensive SUVs.
What is the Suzuki Ignis?
If there’s one thing Suzuki does well, it’s small cars. In particular, packing a bunch of character into a small hatchback or SUV seems to be its forte, so it’s no surprise that the Ignis is a car that’ll put a smile on your face from the minute you clap eyes on it.
Behind its funky styling, with its fat wheel arches and mischievous face, the Ignis is one of the smallest SUVs out there. It’s shorter than a MINI and almost as narrow as a Volkswagen Up, which makes it ideally suited to the tightly-packed traffic in Britain’s towns and cities. But cleverly, because it’s also tall, the Ignis offers enough space for four adults to sit comfortably.
How practical is it?
The cheapest Ignis SZ3 comes with five seats, incorporating a three-seat rear bench that’s fixed in place. However, if you upgrade to the mid-spec SZ-T or the top-spec SZ5 (no, we’re not sure what’s wrong with ‘SZ4’ either), you get two individual rear seats instead.
This obviously reduces the amount of people you can carry in your Ignis, but that’s not such a bad thing given the middle seat in an Ignis is pretty cramped anyway. What’s more, the flipside is that both rear seats slide forward and backward individually, which allows you to increase boot space at the expense of rear leg room. With the rear seats upright, there's 260 litres of luggage space in the boot or 204 litres if you have an Allgrip four-wheel drive model, as the drivetrain eats into the space.
That’s handy if, for example, you’ve only one rear passenger to carry, or a child seat on one side that takes up less space, and it turns the Ignis into one of the most versatile small cars out there.
Elsewhere, you’ll find the interior feels a little cheap in places, but crucially, the bits you touch most often are made from higher-quality plastic, so you rarely notice. It’s styled smartly, too.
What's it like to drive?
Driving the Ignis is a bit hit-and-miss. For starters, the short wheelbase and slightly stiff suspension result in a slight bounciness that can be disconcerting if you take a larger bump at speed. For the most part, though, it’s smooth enough, even on the motorway, where the Ignis is a surprisingly adept cruiser.
It’s at its best around town, though, where the peppy little 1.2-litre petrol engine gives of its best, and those diminutive dimensions really come into their own. Nipping through gaps in traffic is a doddle and parking a cinch. Indeed, the tall, flat tail end and snub nose make it dead easy to tell where the car ends, and the narrow flanks mean you can squeeze into remarkably tight spots.
What’s more, when you’re in town you can take advantage of all the shop windows to admire the Ignis’s stand-out styling. It references the classic Suzuki Whizzkid from the 1970s, but adds a modern twist, and as a result, offers just the right amount of character: enough to catch the eye, without looking over-the-top.
Technology, equipment & infotainment
If you’re buying on a budget, the basic SZ3 version gets you all of the Ignis’s character for a fair chunk less cash. And you still get air-conditioning and Bluetooth connectivity as standard, so you won’t feel like you’re having to live on the cheap.
If you’re after four-wheel drive, though, you’ll need to upgrade to the SZ5, and you’ll pay £1,000 more than for the standard two-wheel-drive car, too. This makes an all-wheel drive Ignis the most expensive version you can buy, though by the standards of most other four-wheel drive cars, it’s still very affordable.
The infotainment system is rather slow and fiddly to use, but you do at least get Apple CarPlay and Android Auto on all but the entry-level model, so you can connect up your smartphone and use that instead as a workaround. Built-in satnav only comes with the most expensive version, though.
Suzuki Ignis running costs
Fuel economy really is one of the Ignis’s trump cards. Even though it’s quite tall, and therefore less aerodynamic than most small cars, it should manage a very credible 50mpg on average; that’s better than most bargain basement SUV rivals, and roughly on a par with similarly city-friendly models.
That fuel economy will drop off slightly if you choose four-wheel drive or the automatic gearbox, mind you; reckon on seeing no more than 40-45mpg if you’re ticking one of those option boxes.
What's more the Ignis counts as an alternative-fuel vehicle, according to the Government, so it'll cost you slightly less to tax than a petrol rival. Low emissions keep the first-year tax rate affordable, too.
Servicing costs on the Ignis should be roughly on a par with city cars from other mainstream manufacturers, though the downside is that Suzuki doesn’t offer servicing payment plans that either allow you to spread the cost on a monthly basis, or give you a discount for paying for several services up-front. Most rival car makers do offer such a service.
The good news is that the Ignis’s engine uses a metal timing chain, rather than the rubber timing belt fitted to some rivals. That means you don’t have to pay out for costly belt changes every few years; instead, the Ignis’s timing chain should last the lifetime of the car.
Suzuki Ignis reliability
It’s a little tricky to tell for sure exactly how reliable an Ignis will be. It sells in such small volumes that it doesn’t tend to feature in reliability surveys, and Suzuki as a manufacturer is also relatively small, so getting an accurate fix on the reliability of its cars is tricky.
Nevertheless, we can tell you that the Ignis finished first out of 22 models in the small car category in the 2023 What Car? Reliability Survey, while Suzuki came third out of 31 brands in the manufacturer section of the same survey in 2024 (the Ignis didn't appear that year) – all of which bodes well.
Suzuki’s warranty isn’t quite as generous as some of the best out there, either. You get three years and 60,000 miles of cover, which is about the minimum that you can expect on a new car these days. When some other manufacturers (like Hyundai and Kia) give you as much as seven years of cover, that seems a little on the stingy side.
- There’s only one engine available with the Ignis. The 'Dualjet' unit, as Suzuki terms it, uses a small electric boost from a starter motor that doubles as a generator, and can harvest energy to store in a small battery while you’re slowing down. This energy is then used later on to help with accelerating, thus saving you fuel. Don’t be fooled by the terminology Suzuki uses, though. It badges the Ignis as a hybrid, but in reality, the “mild hybrid" electrical system used here is much less powerful than that which you’ll find in a “full hybrid" such as a Toyota Prius, and while it does make a difference to fuel economy, that difference is marginal.
- You can only get the entry-level SZ3 version with a six-speed manual gearbox and front-wheel drive, though if you upgrade to the SZ-T, you can choose an automatic gearbox as an optional extra should you wish to. We’d avoid doing so unless you absolutely have to, though, as the CVT (continuously-variable transmission) isn’t all that pleasant to use, as it holds the engine revs at the top of the range while you accelerate. Not only does this feel unnatural, but it results in quite a bit of engine noise.
- You can also spec the automatic gearbox on the top-spec SZ5, which can also be had as a manual with two-wheel drive, or a manual with four-wheel drive, which Suzuki brands 'Allgrip'. In fact, the Ignis is now the smallest vehicle out there to offer four-wheel drive, making this version perfect if you live out in the sticks, but need to commute into the city.
- The best version in the Ignis range, in our view, is the SZ-T with the manual gearbox. It’s true that this model only gets you four seats, but given how vestigial the middle seat is in the back of the SZ3 version, that isn’t a great loss, and the extra versatility the sliding rear seats give you makes a lot of difference. The SZ-T also gets you Apple CarPlay and Android Auto as standard, which helps you get around the Ignis’s flawed infotainment system.
- We’d steer you away from an automatic Ignis, given the gearbox isn’t very good, and suggest you try auto versions of some other small cars instead. However, if it’s an automatic Ignis you want, then you’ll have to opt for the SZ-T model at least, because it isn’t available on the cheaper SZ3.
