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By Warren BrownThe Washington Post and WashingtonPost.com
May 8, 2005
In the most recent manner of things Suzuki, the five-door Reno offers a lot for the money -- attractive exterior styling, a reasonably comfortable interior and a commendable amount of standard equipment, including side air bags for the driver and front-seat passenger. All of this is assembled rather nicely. Inexpensive here feels neither cheap nor slipshod. The car isn't offensive. In fact, at suburban and urban commuter speeds, it feels downright substantial. Just don't make the mistake of taking it on the highway for too long a run. At the end of a 200-mile trip, you are guaranteed to feel as if you've driven 500 miles nonstop. The Reno's 2-liter, inline four-cylinder, 126-horsepower engine is a buzz-box in which the buzzing grows louder as the speed increases. Buzz, buzzz, buzzzz, buzzzzz -- it starts buzzing after 55 miles per hour, reaching a crescendo at 80 miles per hour, whereupon the buzz becomes a pitiful whine as the engine shouts: "No more! That's it! No more!" It is as if the car is equipped with its own traffic enforcement device, buzzing you into compliance with any speed limit of 55 to 70 miles per hour. The buzzing is so annoying, no law enforcement officer familiar with the Reno will bother chasing you down. That officer most probably will smile to himself or herself, knowing that the racket you're enduring will slow you down soon enough. And if the buzzing doesn't get you, the ambient wind noise will. I found this surprising, because the Reno is aerodynamically sculpted -- a body by the famous Giugiaro Italdesign, no less. It's a cute bug of a car that feels as if it's slipping through air, free of anything approaching wind resistance, at speeds below 50 miles per hour. But the Reno goes to war with the wind at 60 and higher speeds; and it is a most uneven match. The wind wins, blowing the car hither and yon, bossing and pummeling it, and doing it all in an uproarious voice from which there is no escape. Turning on the car's eight-speaker audio system is no remedy. I did that. I inserted a disc by Armik -- "Café Romantico" again -- and I popped in another disc by the Reverend Al Green, "Everything's OK." No solution at all. The wind noise ruled. I should have taken along one of those books on disc, something like Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights." O! Catherine! O! Heathcliff! You neurotic, tortured lovers! Where were you when I needed you? Ah, and yes -- the bounce, the bounce. The Reno is equipped with an independent MacPherson strut front suspension and an independent dual-link suspension in the rear. That is a good setup for a car with a short wheelbase, the "wheelbase" being the centerline distance between the front and rear wheels. Short-wheelbase cars can be awfully cruel to human bottoms and backs, because such cars generally do a poor job of filtering the road's imperfections. That generic failure often leads to unpleasant vibrations in the passenger cabin. The suspension arrangement in the Reno is designed to alleviate that problem; and it does just that on rutted and ruined city streets. But the Reno's suspension system turns the car into a bounce-and-wiggle-mobile a higher speeds where handling become discernibly dicey. So, what it all comes down to is this: The Reno is a good, reasonably fuel-efficient commuter. It is a city car, a neighborhood runner. It does well in those environments; and anyone buying the car for that specific use, as a daily urban commuter, is buying something of measurable value. But if you're betting that you can turn the Reno into something it most definitely is not -- a steady, pleasant, long-distance runner -- you are going to be disappointed. Actually, you are going to be considerably more than disappointed. You are going to be buzzed, whipped, wind-blown and worn out. Tailor your expectations here.
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