Combat-ready, mountain-going vehicles are much in evidence these days, nowhere more thickly than in places where combat scenarios and mountains are seldom seen. If you live in a built-up area, it's highly likely that you will be going up on to the kerb at some point today, in order to make room for someone coming the other way in some kind of plastic-clad personnel carrier.
What, you may find yourself asking, as the car's bumpers crawl by at head-height, is the appeal of these vehicles? Well, the view is pretty good. And they offer the comforting knowledge that you will be driving one of the biggest things on the road that isn't a lorry. Plus, obviously, if you drive them fast enough in built-up areas, other people have to get up on to the kerb to get out of your way.
In terms of sheer people-baiting mass, the Suzuki Grand Vitara XL-7 is right up there with the big boys. It's a foot and a half longer than the Toyota RAV4 and nearly a foot longer than the Freelander. It's only an inch and a bit shorter than the egregiously long Land Rover Discovery, and just three and a bit inches shorter than the comically vast and appropriately named Isuzu Trooper. It's still got a little way to go before matching the Mitsubishi Shogun (5.3in, to be precise), but then so have many vehicles actually classified as buses.
What will you do with the space? Fill it, according to Suzuki, which is even ready to offer you a plastic box for the roof, for any items the Vitara cannot contain. But what could those items possibly be? You have here a seven-seater cabin which, by collapsing the rear seats, can be swiftly converted into a perfectly serviceable indoor five-a-side arena. The Grand Vitara is nature's way of telling you you've got too much stuff.
In theory, it's a vehicle for the great outdoors. Using the secondary gear-shift, you can switch simply between two-wheel and four-wheel-drive, the second mode offering two gears of its own, one for general road use and the other for cutting paths through forests and attempting vertical climbs. And you can make the change while driving, though only if you are travelling at less than 62mph and going in a straight line. (Do it while cornering at 90, and it's not clear exactly what would happen, though my hunch is that the back door would blow off and the engine would end up two counties away in a field.)
Noting this feature, and having assessed the Vitara's visual signals - its ruggedness, its brutally military front end and steroidal wheel-arches - I decided to do what most people would do with it and took it on a school run.
This particular school run ran the gamut of urban 4x4 experiences from A to Z. It required the use of several streets inconveniently narrowed on both sides by parked cars. (Note: you are unlikely to clip anything stationary with the Vitara's wing-mirror; it passes over the roofs of most other cars.) It involved the negotiation of no fewer than three different kinds of sleeping policeman. (The Vitara breathed fluidly across them all.) It allowed several times for the forcing of other cars off the road. (Cars which were not 4x4s tended to back down without a struggle.) And at the other end it necessitated some illegal parking in a residents only parking bay. (Whatever Suzuki says, this is not an easy car to park. Or certainly not in a hurry and in a space which is too small for it. I have never parked more badly. Frankly, I might just as well have abandoned the thing in the middle of the road.)
I had deliberately factored in five minutes of lateness, to give the run an authentic edge and to ensure maximum use of accelerator and brake. (Punching on the former revealed the car to be a bit underpowered, which is not something you want to discover when you are in the middle of making other road users very angry). Yet thanks to the Vitara's tight handling I made up two of the five minutes. And that is including a brief pause to wind the window down and have an argument about driving with someone in a BMW. A good performance, then, all in all.
Would you want to do anything more extreme with it? It's a big tough toy - though perhaps not that tough, in truth. I reckon you wouldn't have to pound the XL-7 over too many ploughed surfaces before things started loosening up and dropping off. Plus you would almost certainly scratch it, and that would never do.
Suzuki hopes to convince us that the Grand Vitara isn't just a family vehicle, but is also a car for solo rides. "Sometimes you have to go it alone," as the literature says. Which is true. But in this case I think you would get lonely. In any case, how romantic is driving around in a bus on your own?
