Suzuki Baleno 1.6 Estate 1.6

Suzuki Baleno is a great car for the family. Loads of room for kids stuff, family outings a doddle. It has never let us down, and is still quite fuel efficient.

A bit tight for three large people to sit in the back, but teenagers no problem. Easy to drive, steering great, brakes a dream (having had a VW Polo).

A real shame they no longer make them.

after selling my audi a4 and buying a susuki baleno estate i thought it was right of meto write this review, i would class this car as a spacious work horse and i am very confident it would not let me down, they are very cheap but you get what you pay for . overall for a 1998 r reg with 12mths mot and 5 mths tax 590 quid was all i paid and for that money i cant grumble.

Ever since the day I bought my first car which was a Fiat 126 I have been a fan of smaller cars. The largest and fastest car I've owned was an XR2 which someone theived after just a couple of weeks so ever since that day I've stuck with the small and slower kind. My last car was a little blue Citroen AX which was nothing special but I loved that car and I had no intention (or the money) to replace it but due to an unfortunate event we inherited a Suzuki Baleno 1.6 Estate and my little blue Citroen AX became redundant so I passed it down the family.

This Suzuki Baleno Estate is just about the opposite with regards to what I look for in a car. I've never been a confident driver and something as large as this big tank scared the pants off me. How would I drive it? How would I manage to park it? How would it even fit on our tiny little narrow street? All these questions and more still puzzle me to this day and I've/we've had this car for nearly 3 months now.

I decided to write this review to hopefully help consumers when it comes to making a purchasing decision. If you're looking for the technical stuff like how many miles it does to the gallon, what horse power break it has or how fast it can go from 0 - 60 then you're looking in the wrong place here. Technical information to do with anything, be it a car, computer, hifi or whatever is foreign to me. I'll be primarily discussing what the car feels like to drive, what the gadgets are like, how much room it has and, pros and cons etc....and I hope that by giving you my overall personal opinion it will make up for the lack of technical detail.

A bit about my car

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At first glance my Suzuki Baleno looks very much like a blokey car. It's very long in size and wider than what I'm used to. It's quite an imposing car when parked next to other smaller ones and can make even large cars look small in comparison. The colour is a dismal burgundy and I can't say there's ever much of a shine to it even when it's just been washed and polished.

The interior is a dismal grey and the dashboard isn't exactly modern looking. There is the standard tape/radio player with OK speakers but again it's nothing special considering the size of the car. At the front there are two airbags, one for the passenger and one for the driver. I've never had airbags in any of my previous cars so this is a bonus for me.

It's a fairly new car and is on a T plate. In fact it's almost like having a brand new car as it's only done 22,000 miles even though we're the third set of owners. There's a couple of scratches and a bit of a chip in the bumper but that's to be expected with a second hand car anyway, it's nothing major.

Let's start off with the pros then

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After fretting about driving this monster for a while I plucked up the courage to take it on some quiet country roads. I was quite suprised to find I like the power it gives, after having only had slow cars before it was a nice change to be able to overtake cars without feeling like you've got to help the car by getting out and pushing it. It is quite a pleasure to drive once you get used to all the niggly things, but the niggly things REALLY do niggle me which I'll tell you about later.

The boot space is pretty good and that would be the main selling point of the car if I was to buy it. It would easily fit in a pram or pushchair and tons of shopping. In fact it's that big you could probably fit anything you want in there, including a couple of people (Joke! Don't do it *tut tut*) The boot also has a cover which you can pull across it to hide anything you don't want someone to nick.

The steering wheel is much better than the one on my Citroen AX. I don't know whether it's because it's higher or lower but my back definitely feels better than it used to after driving a fair distance. I remember having to drive to my Husbands Mums (70 miles away) in the AX and by the time we arrived my back would be murdering me. Well no more backache for me hopefully. There is also far more leg room in the front and because i've got long legs this is another advantage.

The steering is fantastic. I thought it'd be a pain to do 3 point turns in this but it's actually much easier than any other car I've driven. It has power steering which I've never had before but boy does it make a difference and as the wheels rotate a fair bit I find I can almost get away without doing a 3 point turn.

The car seat we bought our son from Halfords was easy to fit in too. Some cars are tricky when it comes to certain car seat designs but in this one it was pretty easy going.

OK now we go onto the cons

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There may not appear to be many pros that I've mentioned and that's because this car has so many more faults and niggly things than anything else. Even the most basic of basic things just don't seem to have been thought out by the cars designers (Japanese unless I'm otherwise mistaken)

Firstly where are the cup holders? Every car needs cup holders surely? My last car had side compartments which were flexible so you could stick all manner of junk in there, well not with this car. Yes it has side compartments but they are really narrow and non flexible so if you want to stick a can of pop in there you've got another thing coming. There is a single cup holder just behind the gear stick but that's as far as it goes. This cup holder is a waste of space and as it's just behind the gear stick I have a tendency to bash the hard plastic of it with my elbow as I'm changing gear. What's the point of having one badly placed cup holder? You might as well not bother having any.

Secondly there are no pouches on the back of the front seats. Now I know this point may appear trivial to a lot of people but if you're looking for a family car then things like these can be a neccessity. If it wasn't for the fact my son's new car seat comes complete with cup holders he'd never have anywhere to keep his drinks. The pouches on the back of the seats are good for keeping kiddie things in so because this car is lacking in them it surely can't be aimed at families, can it?

Thirdly the indicators and windscreen wiper controls are in the wrong place. I don't know about any of you but on my other cars the indicators were on the left hand side and the wipers were on the right. Well not on this car. In this car it's the other way round. To this day I'm still activating the windscreen wipers by accident instead of indicating. God it's annoying.!

Fourthly the electric windows are terrible and may as well be manual. They all go at different speeds and sometimes you're lucky if they move at all. More often than not you have to give them a helping hand by pulling at the window or pushing (depending on which way you want them to wind)

Fifthly there's barely any more room in the backseat area than my Citroen AX had. Yes this one has more room in the front and in the boot but space is seriously lacking for backseat passengers.

Sixthly the back doors don't exactly open very wide. I was hoping that by having a 4 door car it'd be easier to get my son in and out of his carseat but I was wrong. The back doors are fairly small and open less than 90 degrees. It can be a struggle to get him in and out for this reason.

Seventh, changing to fifth gear can sometimes be a bit tough as the gearstick is rather stiff when it comes to this gear. If you do it forcefully you will reach fifth gear almost all the time, but if you don't put force into it the car will say NO.

Eighth , this car is too big to park in our teeny weeny driveway and overlaps the pavement quite considerably which is a major concern as the road where we live is pretty narrow and cars need to be parked on a driveway (not on the road)

Ninth, it doesn't look very nice. It's a big ugly car with not many redeeming features and I'm at a loss as to who this car is aimed towards. The gadgets are too poor for it to be aimed at a bloke surely. I would've thought due to the size of it families are what they should market it towards, but then there isn't enough (or indeed any) gadgets or pouches etc.... that would please families.

Overall thoughts

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You have probably guessed that I'm not very fond of this car. Thank God I didn't have to fork out for it otherwise I would've been one disappointed bunny. Yes it is smooth and pretty fast to drive, yes it takes the hard work out of driving, yes it's got a mighty fine boot and a couple of other things but NO I wouldn't buy it. I wouldn't buy this car even if money was coming out of my ears. A total waste of money.

The pros of the car are seriously outweighed by the cons. Who designed this great lump? OK so the car goes, and it goes fast but so what? My Citroen AX was far better in terms of practicality even though it didn't have a huge boot or burn rubber. I've got to admit by driving this beast it's put me at ease when it comes to driving other big cars, but that's the only real positive thing I can think to say.

If you would like to know anything else about this car please feel free to ask. I realise I may have excluded what some people may think is vital information but to be honest if you're still thinking about buying one of these then I think you may be a little mad in the head.

For some technical stuff try www.topgear.com