What Van? Britain's biggest and best van buyers' guide

It’s easy to fall in love with the Suzuki Jimny LCV, but beware because this little 4x4 will break your heart. 

Just 400 are earmarked for the UK this year, and they’re likely to be more in demand than a table at your local beer garden was coming out of lockdown.

But what’s so special about the Jimny Light Commercial Vehicle, Suzuki’s first van since the Carry slipped from the range in 2005? 

It’s unquestionably cute, in a ‘Honey I Shrunk the G Wagon’ kind of way, and has an air of off-roading ability like a Land Rover Defender toddler that’s just taking its first steps in the world. Then there’s the price, which at £16,796 (ex VAT) makes it one of the cheapest 4x4s in the commercial vehicle sector, just a few hundred pounds more than a Dacia Duster Commercial 4x4, and only beaten on price by the Fiat Fiorino as a normal van.

Both are small volume sellers in the van market – the established Fiorino sells a little over 800 units per year – and the Jimny will be the same in the long term, not least because of its modest annual allocation that will almost certainly see demand out-strip supply. But with Suzuki saying it expects a similar allocation for the following year, the Jimny could be the most exclusive van on the road for quite some time.

Very little has had to be been done to the Jimny car to enable it to be sold as a commercial vehicle. Power still comes from a four-cylinder 1.5-litre petrol engine, producing 100hp and 130Nm of torque. That’s paired to a five-speed manual gearbox within a ladder frame chassis with three-link rigid suspension and coil springs. Aside from a petrol, rather than diesel, engine, it has all the hallmarks of a modest little van with the exception of its selectable four-wheel-drive system, which allows you to choose between two-wheel or four-wheel drive as well as low ratios. There’s no locking differential, instead an electronic traction control system keeps all four wheels turning at the right moment when things get slippy.

Rear seats in the passenger car version are best suited to accommodating children, so their removal in order to make a loadspace was never going to yield a vast amount of space. With the seats and their anchoring points removed, Suzuki has shifted the front seats forward by 10mm in order to achieve the required 900mm length for the loadspace that ensures it is officially categorised as an N1 class commercial vehicle. The floor has been made completely flat and a fixed part-solid, part-mesh bulkhead added to separate occupants from the cargo area. The result is a fairly compact 0.9m³ load volume – roughly 10% less than a Ford Fiesta van and half that of a Dacia Duster Commercial. 

While that doesn’t sound like a lot, and really it isn’t, the conversion has at least been done to a good standard. As the Jimny is only a three-door vehicle anyway, it feels and looks like a natural adaptation as opposed to many conversions that make do with poorly fabricated boxes to fill the void designed for rear passenger’s legs, which are revealed when the rear doors are opened. The manner in which the plastic moulded sides of the loadspace neatly join the utilitarian carpet of the flat floor do make it feel entirely intentional, and with a 12v socket on the rear pillar and a hidden compartment for tyre-changing tools under the floor, the Jimny LCV does practicality as well as its size allows. 

Up front, the cabin certainly reminds you of an older-model 4x4, not least because of the squat four-wheel drive selector sitting behind the regular gear stick, as opposed to more modern rotary dials. The plastic-heavy interior has no pretences that this is now anything but a working vehicle with chunky, purposeful buttons and dials that you can paw at and twist while bouncing along a dirt track. There’s not much in the way of storage, with a small tray beside the handbrake, one at the base of the central dash column and
a glovebox that an estate agent would describe as bijou. You’ll also struggle to get more than a copy of What Van? in the narrow door pockets. But it looks and feels every inch an off-roader, from the robust grab handle in the dash directly in front of the passenger, down to the hex key styled screw heads in the corners of the square-shaped instrument housing for the engine revs and speed dials. It’s little-wonder this fourth-generation Jimny became an instant hit with punters when it was launched in 2018.

Equipment is basic, but there’s a multifunction steering wheel, air conditioning and electric mirrors. Tyre pressure monitoring, hill hold assist and hill descent control are also standard.

One small gripe is that perhaps Suzuki has undersold its buyers on the infotainment system fitted to the Jimny van. The car version gets a 7in touchscreen with satnav from the Swift passenger car, but as a poor relation LCV it’s been downgraded to a more basic double-DIN typed analogue-looking affair – admittedly with DAB radio and Bluetooth.

Suzuki says they have kept the Jimny LCV line-up “simple in order to optimise supply capacity”, “do not need more than one model grade” and that “there is no indication that the current audio spec will put off interested buyers” – which if the strong demand remains, you can well believe. However, given that they also say they “do not expect buyers of the Jimny commercial version to differ from those previously interested in the Jimny passenger car”, then perhaps some will be disappointed by the downgrade. What they do say is that it will appeal to “a mixture of fans of the design and people that need its immense off-road capability for professional or leisure uses” – so we’ll get back in our box and keep quiet.