Hey,
Am driving a Suzuki Swift Sports (MT) 2009 on a daily basis for commute from home to work everyday. I would say, its a very torquey car, very light on the pedals... gear ratio's you are looking similar with the Honda B16 series... at 140km/h maximum gear i'm kicking in at 5000rpm... IF it was a vtec, i’ll be anticipating on hearing the sweet symphony of the vtec melody ready to open... haha
Factory recommendation to use is RON98 actually... been using RON97 for a year, and had to downgrade to RON95 after the price hike, no problems so far, but slight power loss (might be just a mental thingi). But do fill her up with RON97 now and then when there's some extra disposable income.
To directly compare it head to head with a neo, as i've drove both of them in a manual tranny... the disappointment is that... the NEO takes a lot of effort and kicking to get it moving from one gear to the other... the swift just give u the adrenalin rush as the more gear you kick up the more it wants to go... i would say the Japanese have gone the extra mile to provide a real fun car... on drive handling, i somehow get the pleasure of doing down hill with it, it controls pretty awesome in the corners and windy roads... and i'm not kidding on this, the brakes bite pretty tight, had some friends complain that they always tend to dive cos they're not used to the brakes as they tend to stop earlier then expected...
On parts and services, yet to replace any major parts in it after using it for a year and a half... service takes about RM300 every 10'000km..
Not forgetting... i get 380km+per full tank on RON95... if strictly no high reving... i’d be lucky to hit 400 (:
Cheers!