How Suzuki took its primary car on an adventure without going anywhere. Check out the film and how it was made.

STAR appeal has been a bit to a sensitive subject in respect Suzuki’s core car, the Swift, ever since the trendy hatch got smacked about by the national crash testing auditor.

Last December’s one star score out of ANCAP was an unwanted attachment to a car that, in previous generations, has been a much stronger performer

It doesn’t read well, not least for fleets which have previously supported the model but also often have policy to only chose five star products (which the old Swift was).

Swift is a vital car for Whanganui-based Suzuki New Zealand; it’s clearly been putting a lot of thought into how it might return some lustre to this model.

One clever idea has been revealed. They’ve gone a bit Hollywood. The result is a high-energy, cinematic film (below), created by an Auckland-specialist, which appears to show the Swift going on a little adventure, zipping and racing across a variety of hand-built sets, as if it’s alive.

In reality the car never left the studio. The whole process is explained in the video below.

The trick? Using stop-motion; an enchanting art form that brings static objects to life one frame at a time. Through a mix of creativity, patience, and technical expertise, animators craft sequences that captivate viewers and push the boundaries of visual storytelling.

In this instance, the car stays in the same place, with creator Adam Rowland’s studio, but is adjusted to suit the visual being sought, with various background materials inserted and removed to create the illusion of perky movement.

Stop-motion is far from a new idea - it’s most famous application, perhaps, has been the Wallace and Gromit films - and, though Suzuki NZ wonders if their’s a world-first effort, that’s call is made in respect to the use of an actual car. Otherwise, others have already travelled down this road.

Check out ‘The Cog’, a still-brilliant 2003 effort commissioned by Honda to showcase the engineering precision of its vehicles. In that film, car parts intricately interact to form a perfect chain reaction. It followed up with a second effort, ‘Paper’.

Kia, Ford and Skoda have also made stop-motion films, though not used in this market.

Suzuki NZ is highly pleased with the outcome, marketing manager Fiona Bridgeford relating in supplied material that “we’re always looking for unexpected ways to show off the personality and performance of the Swift.

“When Adam came to us with this wild idea of animating a real car using stop-motion, we were immediately intrigued. It felt playful, unique - and very Suzuki.”

Meantime, here’s the completed video, below.