Row-it-yourself Suzuki Fronx is great fun when you are in a hurry

Our long-term Suzuki Fronx GLX has been anything and everything to anybody who has used it over the past five months.

It’s light and easy to drive, the infotainment and controls are simple to use, it’s light on fuel and its peppy enough, especially in manual guise to keep you happy. It’s this very topic that brings me to a second update with my time in the Suzuki Fronx.

It was not a planned outing, but I had to be at our Gerotek test facility to get some data from some serious high-performance machinery in the form of Porsche’s Cayenne GTS Coupe and Audi’s RS Q8. For a bit of fun, we decided to take a bet on the times our Suzuki Fronx would run if put through our test programme.

Suzuki Fronx put to the test

The Citizen Motoring‘s department head, Jaco van der Merwe, said the Fronx will get there in 12.8 seconds. Charl Bosch, our tamed racing driver and digital guru, threw in a 12.5. I was bit more gallous and optimistically said it would do a 12.2, when in fact none of us had a clue how fast it would be.

The Suzuki Fronx runs the global 1.5 litre K15B naturally aspirated engine that has been produced by Maruti Suzuki since 2018 and offers up 77kW of power at 6 000rpm and 138Nm of torque at 4 400rpm. Not a lot in anybody’s book, but the Fronx weighs in at only 1 010kg and this improves its power-to-weight ratio.

Now add to this a relatively slick shifting five-speed manual gearbox and you have a fun car that reminds you somewhat about your youth when all you had was a cheap manual car to drive around in. By the way, many Toyotas today also use this very same engine.

Row it yourself

Now, in my line of business, its mostly only high-performance cars that find themselves with me at Gerotek and just about every double cab bakkie too. But that’s a story about the decay of real journalism over page views in a modern social media world that will be told another day.

ALSO READ: Versatile Suzuki Fronx a willing runner that doesn’t run out of puff

Our Racelogic VBOX test equipment was hooked up and traction control switched off. The latter was something we didn’t have back in the day. We died like real men wrapped around a pole when we ran out of traction.

In the past few years, the clever people have figured out that a computer can do what you can do, but do it much faster, so automatics, be they conventional torque converter setups to lightning quick double clutch boxes, are what you will find in 90% of fast cars these days. But of course, our Suzuki Fronx is a five-speed manual. That means the dummy behind the wheel would be responsible for the times and not a computer.

Very little wheel spin

It was time to dial in 5 000rpm and let the clutch go and see what happens. Now, believe it or not, the Suzuki Fronx runs 195/60 R16 rubber. In 1995 my fire-breathing Opel Kadett 200 TS with double the power and double the torque ran on 195/45 R16 rubber. And the point of this little side note meant that even by dialling all the rpm allowed, the tyres only gave a brief spin in disgust at what was being asked and then romped off down the test strip.

The biggest factor in nailing the times was that I was 100% in control and how quick I could hit the next gear a millisecond away from the rev limiter. I felt as slow and out of place as an old barn door and managed a 12.8 second first run. The joke was on me and Charl, but the memories of the old days when it took a good few runs to match the clutch to the revs to the shift points to nail a good time, were coming back to me. Maybe there is still some life left in this old dog!

ALSO READ: Good-looking Suzuki Fronx a comfortable ride that’s big on value

Value for money

This is a Suzuki, with a K15B, the combination is unbreakable and I went on a mission to get this Fronx moving faster. Each run I got myself shifting gears quicker, the Fronx got quicker and eventually we ended up on a 12.27 second 0-100 km/h run. I had called the number right in the beginning. Call it experience, or call it simple luck, either way, this Suzuki Fronx did exactly what we expected it would.

It’s not super-fast, but it will top out around 175km/h. That is enough to get you some jail time. What’s more impressive, it retails for only R335 900, comes with a five-year/200 000km warranty and a four-year/60 000 km service plan. And it only sips 6.3 litres per 100 km of fuel.

The Suzuki Fronx is friendly on the eye and on the pocket. It’s great fun when you want it to be. What more do you need in an everyday car?

Suzuki Fronx test data