When people look back on the hot summer of 2018 people will remember day after day of wonderful warmth, endless barbecues and golden fields. It wasn’t a British scene we were used to.

And Suzuki couldn’t have planned the launch of their new Swift Sport any better. The car hit the garage forecourts in June and it was the brightest yellow possible, putting the cornfields to shame.

People driving them were likened to giant wasps which was a nice comparison because this Swift Sport had a pretty big buzz with it!

It can do 0-62mph in just over eight seconds and it has a top speed of 130mph.

On top of that this Swift will practically do 50 miles to the gallon and all for £18,000. Not surprisingly it has been selling like hot cakes in a pretty depressed motoring market.

The Swift has a 1.4 litre turbocharged four cylinder engine, six speed manual box and front wheel drive. And probably it’s one of the best cars I’ve driven this year.

It is certainly better that the one litre Ford Fiesta and on a par with the SEAT Ibiza 1.5TSI.

Its reasonable price makes it cheaper by at least a couple of £2k than a Peugeot 208 GTI, Vauxhall Corsa VXR or the Renault Clio RS.

And on top of that, there’s bags of kit like touchscreen satnav with Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, voice controls and a reversing camera.

Out and about the Swift Sport is pretty lively and responsive and there is variable assistance steering which seems to be fine.

The six speed gear box works a treat, nicely tight and good up and down through the gears.

My only minor objection is all the extra kit which you have to turn off. I dislike this lane keeping assist and all the other semi-autonomous pieces which you find in modern cars these days. There is a cruise control which is actually adaptive so it stops you from crashing anything in front.

Can’t we be allowed to drive our cars the way we want? My bête noir is the stop/go. Lots of people love this because they say it saves five per cent on the fuel bill.

That’s fine but let me switch it off and on, rather than it automatically dropping into this vogue.

Last year Suzuki had a record year for sales in the UK last year with more than 40,000 vehicles coming on to our roads. This was six per cent growth year on year.

While this is comparatively small compared to India where they sell Suzukis by the hundreds of thousands there is a small but loyal fan base in the UK and there is a choice of seven different models.

Five of them have four wheel drive capability either as standard or as an optional choice and their ALLGRIP models account for more than 25 per cent of Suzuki sales in the UK. And Suzuki offers seven of the top 10 most fuel efficient lower cost four wheel drive cars on sale in the UK.

Surprisingly instead of going down, the sales of 4x4 are on the up because most people feel safer in one of these type of cars.

Low cost of ownership is a key benefit with Suzuki and this was recently demonstrated with two independent fuel consumption reports.

Like Mazda, another Japanese manufacturer who produce excellent vehicles Suzuki are having good times at the moment. Long may it continue.