Long term review

Or maybe more accurately relationship counselling. 

So last May I took control of bellerophon, aka custard, aka the yellow one, aka it.

The main reason being the preservation of my beloved temeraire and her retirement to pavement princess. In this regard the yellow one has performed perfectly. 

However what suzuki have done in the transition between the two generations is to my mind an act of savagery, it bends my mind that they could take something so right and turn it so wrong.  I accept that some of the frustrating things are legally mandatory like the tpms and the lane departure and the collision avoidance and the drls and the emergency services button but while they are apparently necessary I really do believe that they could have budgeted differently and found system versions that actually work properly and discreetly in the background such that they are there when you actually need them but are otherwise quiet and don't distract and frustrate the act of driving. But they are mandatory and for what it is a jimny is cheaper than the competition by several orders of magnitude. 

Unfortunately it doesn't stop with the mandatory stuff, my disappointment extends further to systems that they had already perfected and then decided they had to keep working on. 

I don't know what their process was but let's imagine that they decided to give more clearance under the axle so fitted bigger tyres ok good.  Then someone said it's going to need more power for those tyres so they fitted the 1.5, yay more power,  but then somebody else said it needs different gearing to improve efficiency, not so good as now it's too high in high range so you can't creep slowly so have move to low range but then have to be in 3rd or 4th because gap between high and low is wider than it used to be and it all becomes just a bit frustrating if you are trying to use it as a tool for working with. 

Then there's the suspension, yes at low speed it rides nice but it is far too soft to hold speed on a corner so you lose the benefit of the extra power because you are forever slowing down. Another issue with the soft suspension is stability with a full capacity trailer. 

There's other little niggles too like the back door not opening to 90 degrees, you sit on the seats not in them, the window switches are too sensitive and there probably more things too.

Now I know that there are going to be people who say buy this kit to fix that problem and you are right most of what annoys me could be modified away but I would rather spend that money on temeraire and that is in part because I find the yellow one frustrating so haven't formed the bo d with it to allow me to spend money on what to all intents and purposes is no less of a tool than a shovel or impact wrench. 

It's doing what I need it to but I'm struggling to connect with it but I'm also unable to see a viable alternative to replace it with for what I need it to do. Not that I intend on selling it ever but I feel like it's a jimny and I should love it unconditionally and I don't. 

Oh and the way that the rest of the windscreen is clear of frost except the bit in front of the camera so it turns the whole dashboard yellow and flashes at how unhappy it is.

Oh and for all the psychology graduates you are probably right I'm almost certainly projecting other parts of my life onto my car as a coping mechanism. Probably.

I think the points you make are pretty fair. Sometimes you just don't have that Bond with a car. I don't have the same bond with my daily blue LCV compared to my others which is why it remains unnamed due to the fact it may go at some stage but I do like it and its not going anywhere anytime soon. The safety features are annoying but thats just a feature of any modern car nowadays and the Jimny is still very simple compared to these other cars. I've been in a few modern day EVs and trust me you will be running back to your Gen 4 so happy that you don't have all the stuff these new cars have. Your right that the gearing isn't where it needs to be and I guess your feeling it more because you've gone back to a manual. I guess you would be better with an Auto Gen 4 but then you lose the commerical side of things. It will be interesting to see how I get on with an older Auto Jimny in the next few weeks but my feeling based on my brief experience in a 5 door Nomade earlier this year is that an Auto has far better crawling speed than a manual. 

Yes I much preferred my gen 3 to sit in compared to the Gen 4.

The seats were more definitely more comfortable (I did have that down to mine having 130,000 miles on them, but you are right, these are just rock hard and I do feel like I'm sitting on top of them not in them!)
My Gen 3 was an early one with the superior split folding rear seats too.

The inside was properly trimmed out, without acres of painted metal showing, the garish blue is bad enough, I'd need sunglasses if I had a fluorescent yellow one!

I still can never find the window switches, the last car I had with them in such a stupid place was a Talbot Samba back in 1985, every other car in the universe has them where you expect- on the door handle.

The Gen 4 does more MPG, and it definitely goes better, but most importantly it isn't terminally rusty!

(I do worry about the longevity of all those dodgy plastic parts on the engine too.)

I'm not sure if the Gen 4 is better looking, other people think so, but it might just be the colour, if it was green it would be a lot better IMHO.


 

I'm just going to try and clarify my thoughts on the gearing. I think a lot of it in low range is that without hill decent there doesn't seem to be enough engine braking effect in any gear than first so that feels like it's a lot lower than low 2nd but because of that it then feels like low 2nd isn't any lower than high 1st. Somehow though it manages to feel very different to my last manual gearbox in dreadnought. I'm not going to compare it with temeraire as the automatic just makes it easy though oddly enough temeraire feels to have more engine braking than the yellow one which is very counter intuitive. I'm not sure I'm using my words properly when I'm trying to explain how it feels it's almost like high range in custard is lifted from a city car so quite long gearing to keep the revs down for efficiency which isn't really what an off road car needs they should be short and quite low for torque and somehow it almost feels like the tyres could be a couple of sizes smaller and it would work better but that doesn't work for clearance. It just seems wrong to me.

You are right with the position of the window switches and believe me having one of each really means you are always looking for the switches in the wrong place.

Also I'm confused with the decision that heated mirrors aren't a safety feature but rather something that can be removed on the poverty specification and yet cruise control is somehow more important than being able to see behind you in winter. Don't get me wrong if I can work out how then I will fit temeraire with cruise control as its brilliant and one of the things I really like on the yellow one.