Suzuki Grand Vitara Sports 2017

Eleven years on the current-generation Suzuki Grand Vitara still claims to be the king of small-budget, mid-sized SUV practicality with big off-roading capabilities

Familiarity can sometimes offer warmer comfort than those fresh-faced things embracing reinvention. That may well be an underlying feeling for those who’ve bought any Suzuki Grand Vitara in the past decade and who’ve just climbed into the 2016 version. Essentially, it’s the same car – the 4x4-savvy SUV that’s Grand in name but no longer quite so grand in size is still planted in the generation that launched back in 2005.

Thus, it's an uphill crawl for this Grand Battler to rise above its ratings from performances past. In critiquing its holistic SUV goodness, the Grand Vitara has long been a perennial low scorer in CarAdvice ratings past: in the last three reviews it rated one six and a pair of fives out of tens.

That said, none were petrol four-wheel drives wearing a Sport badge. As perhaps the best all-rounder variant of its crop, and at a seductive price point at that, a bump up to 6.5 out of ten is a deserving one.

Pros
Decent off-road abilities
Sport variant the best dual-purpose 4x4 SUV of the breed
Attractive pricing
Old-school charm..

Cons
that's stuck in old-school execution
Powertrain is old hat
Average on-road driving experience
Increasingly passé in this very fast moving segment