This is the Suzuki Baleno review, written some six months before the car goes on sale in spring 2016. We were invited out to Spain to try some pre-production cars and form an initial evaluation. As you can see from our star rating, we came away impressed – both with its cabin design and the way it drives.

Third small car in Suzuki’s range

It’s a rival to the Honda Jazz and Nissan Note – cars which have a small footprint (roughly Ford Fiesta-sized) but maximise their interior and luggage space with clever packaging. They’re grown-up vehicles for a grown-up crowd, which goes some way to explaining why Suzuki is going to sell it alongside the similarly-sized Swift hatchback and the smaller Celerio city car, both of which appeal to younger audiences.

The Baleno represents a more premium offering too, and while pricing and equipment levels haven’t been set in stone yet, we’ve got the inside line from Suzuki on the likely kit on offer. It makes for interesting reading, with a seven-inch touchscreen sat-nav and reversing camera even at the base specification. No word yet on what trim levels will be called, either, but check the equipment section of this review for the low-down on what we know so far.

Hard-wearing cabin

It’s not perfect, though: the cabin does feature some cheaper-feeling plastics that appear of a lesser quality than some rivals. The flipside to that point is they feel incredibly hard-wearing, so they’re likely to stand the test of time even if they’re not the last word in aesthetic grandeur.

We were impressed with the engine line-up too, with an all-new 1-litre ‘Boosterjet’ turbocharged engine joining a 1.2 in the all-petrol line-up. You’ve got manual or automatic gearboxes too, and in typical Suzuki fashion they’re all decent to drive.