Two awards for reliability and low running costs in France have been presented to the strong-selling Suzuki Swift hatchback.

The usually patriotic French market is giving the thumbs-up to the highly successful Swift which has dominated the New Zealand small car sector in recent years.

Suzuki has been placed first in an annual reliability list by the French Auto Plus journal ahead of Kia and Peugeot.

In a second accolade, the new generation Swift was rated the best model in the category of city cars by L’argus magazine in France.

The Auto Plus survey is based on reader’s letters and analyses the reliability of the 20 most popular car makes in France.

The position of each model is calculated as a proportion of the breakdowns over the past eight years and the number of cars sold since 2003.

A policy of continual improvement in quality was yielding its fruits, according to Suzuki France.

Luc Malnoury, director of technical and after sales service for Suzuki France, said the new Swift was the perfect illustration of this policy.

“This award is a recognition of thorough attention and the work invested in the vehicles through their entire life cycle,” he said.

Jean-Luc de la Ruffie, Suzuki France’s sales director, said, “Producing excellent quality has always been Suzuki’s primary goal.”

In the L’argus award cars were rated on the basis of cost-efficiency - purchase price, maintenance costs and re-sale after three years or 60,000 kilometres. L’argus said the new five-door Swift GLX was voted tops in the city car class, and was the “best value for price” in France.

The surveys come in the wake of record global production for Suzuki automobiles for 2010. Suzuki’s Japanese domestic and exports were up, while the brand recorded record highs for its production in India and China.

Suzuki global production of 2,892,945 last year was a 21.2 per cent increase on 2009, while the company’s Japanese production lifted 18.7 per cent to more than one million units.

Suzuki produces more vehicles outside Japan than in its home market, with overseas production of the brand increasing by 22.7 per cent to 1,814,703.

The good times keep rolling for the make, with Suzuki outselling all other Japanese brands in Romania in January for the first time.

In January the Indian division of Suzuki posted a large jump in domestic and export sales to 109,743, a 14.7 per cent increase on the same month in 2010.

Maruti Suzuki also sold a record number of new Suzukis in the Indian market in January, with demand up by one third.

Suzuki Swift is a sales champion six years in succession in the New Zealand market. The fifth generation Swift maintained its popularity in 2010, outsold all other supermini cars and was second overall to the Toyota corolla in all model sales.

Suzuki Swift was also the number one selling new car to private vehicle purchasers in New Zealand in 2010, out-selling runner-up corolla by more than 30 percent.

ENDS

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