What's the news?
And the winner of the cutest car at the 2016 Paris Motor Show is... The new Suzuki Ignis, which in spite of its quasi-SUV styling is actually designed to slot between the Celerio city car and the Swift supermini in Suzuki's increasingly crowded small car range.
That design really is quite cool though, and if you squint a bit, you can see some resemblance to the classic ultra-tiny 'Whizzkid' small car of the seventies (check out the little indentations in the c-pillar for the throwback reference). It may be small, but it's certainly cool.
Suzuki is determined that it should be practical though, so there's a 267-litre boot (pretty decent for a small car like this) and lots of cubby holes and storage areas in the cabin. The ride height is jacked up to 180mm, and that combined with the wheel-at-each-corner layout, says Suzuki, gives great confidence on urban and rural roads.
On the tech front there's a neat touschscreen, which you can load up with third party mapping data on an SD card and there's Android Auto and Apple CarPlay as well. There's also a stereoscopic camera in the windscreen which works for both the autonomous emergency braking system and the lane departure warning.
There's only one engine option for the moment - the 1.2-litre petrol mild hybrid (SHVS in Suzuki speak) with 90hp, 120Nm of torque and claimed fuel economy of 67mpg. You can get the engine without a mild hybrid option, which should be a bit cheaper to buy and there doesn't seem to be much of a dent in the fuel consumption. There are also automatic and four-wheel drive options.
Suzuki's on a bit of a small car roll at the moment, with the excellent Baleno already on sale and the new Swift due soon. The Ignis will slot into the lineup with sales starting in January.