What does 'enough car' really look like?

'Smaller, fewer, lighter, shorter, beauty’ is a Suzuki corporate philosophy that pertains to the company’s compact cars, like the new-generation Swift that I recently drove.

Obviously they say it in Japanese (‘sho-sho-kei-tan-bi’), but the mindset translates to the Swift being 3.8 metres long, so shorter than most superminis, and weighing less than a tonne, so lighter than most by a margin too.

“We’re good at making small cars,” notes Dale Wyatt, director of Suzuki Cars UK. But if there’s a feeling that the brand flies under the radar in Europe, where it’s a relatively niche player and the Vitara SUV tends to be its best-seller, it isn’t as understated elsewhere.

Suzuki sells more cars in Japan’s kei small car segment than anyone, at more than 400,000 per year, while its Maruti Suzuki subsidiary is by far the biggest car maker in India, where it typically has six or seven of the top 10 best-selling cars, including the entire top four in 2023 (both the Swift and the Wagon R sell more than 200,000 per year there).

I’ve been thinking about little cars a lot since driving the Swift and, the week before that, the Silence S04 electric quadricycle, which is even smaller (measuring 1.29m wide by 2.28m long) and lighter (weighing just 450kg).

I’ve been wondering, partly in response to a letter from reader Clive Acaster about the Renault Twizy and Citroën Ami being ‘not enough car’: just how big is ‘enough’ and what does ‘enough car’ look like?