The roads are such a serious place to be these days. Cameras are everywhere, there’s non-stop roadworks, multiple average speed zones on a motorway run, and the cost seems to be ever-increasing as well. I even passed a “Community Speed Watch” point yesterday with some old dude holding a clipboard because he probably had nothing better to do, and imposing his misery on others. Add to this the impending doom of Clean Air Zones, and the Government pushing EVs on us for “the sake of the environment” (don’t get me started on that one); suddenly, looking at the roads as a fun place all starts to get a bit murky.

Yet it’s “fun” that I’ve been craving for a little while now. I refuse to believe it’s gone forever. Sure, there’s track days but the weather hasn’t been ideal for the Cup 2s on my car of late, and it’s not a cheap game to get into either. I used to love driving when big brother wasn’t casting his beady eye down on me. The feeling of jumping in the car and being able to go anywhere, finding twisty back roads to push your car on, and concentrating so much about keeping it on the straight and narrow, that all your troubles and stresses disappeared for that short period of time. It was like therapy for me, and I’m sure many others as well.

So what a breath of fresh air it was when I got behind the wheel of a Jimny recently, thanks to Premier Automotive in Rochdale. I sat in the car and this freeing sense of being able to go pretty much anywhere, roads or no roads suddenly seemed very present. The last time I felt this was when I first drove to the Isle of Man. I remember driving off the ferry and hitting the mountain just a few minutes later. With no speed limit to worry about, it felt like you owned the road. It’s not too dissimilar in the Jimny, for different reasons of course, but nobody is more surprised than me.

The first thing you notice when walking up to the Jimny is its diminutive size. It’s only 3.65m long, 1.65m wide and 1.7m tall. Length-wise that’s under 1 metre longer than a Smart car, and over 1.5 metres shorter than most other cars in this sort of sector, making it very easy to park, but yet it’s somehow still relatively spacious inside. The doors feel light but solid when you open them, and you can climb into the cabin with relative ease, as it’s not up in the sky like a Defender, although the driving position is still very commanding. Once you’re in, you start to notice the materials aren’t as bad as you’d expect. Okay, they aren’t luxurious, but they’re better than something like a Dacia Duster which is similar money.

The “Zook” feels like a proper off-roader rather than an SUV. In fact this one only has two seats as the emissions were so bad, Suzuki couldn’t afford to keep paying the EU fines and rebadged it as an LCV. Overall it’s the same car as the four seater, but it has a larger load area thanks to the missing rear bench, a steel bulkhead and a different road tax band, meaning it’s £275/year at the time of writing. It needs to be insured as a van but I personally found this cheaper than a car quote.

You start the car by physically turning a key, and the 1.5 litre petrol engine quietly fires up, purring away quietly at idle. It almost feels quite civilised, but there’s a rough and ready feel, building into that old-school, back-to-your-driving roots scenario that the car seems to ooze out of everywhere. The clutch is quite light and city-car-like, whilst the long gear lever reassuringly clicks into each of the five gears with a solid feel.

Setting off from a standstill requires a good amount of revs and I have to say I stalled the car more than once; you get used to this though. So it’s quite an unusual choice of engine as you’d expect something with more low-down torque/power (130Nm and 100bhp), but let’s not forget that this car is under £20,000. If you’re a VAT-registered business, you’ll be saving 20% on that too. Therefore I think the budget-friendly power plant is suitable, and dare I say it adds a lot of character to the whole experience. This isn’t a dynamic car, and I feel too much power could quickly overwhelm the chassis and steering, although aftermarket Supercharger and Turbocharger kits are available.

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