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I had a quick biz trip down nearSan Diego this week. Del Mar, to be precise, which is about 115 miles from our office in Santa Monica. After considering my trio of vehicle options (Ram pickup, Challenger, SX4), I went with the Suzuki . And there were a trio ofreasons for my choice: fuel economy, a nav systemand Bluetooth. Follow the jump to see how it fared…

Fuel economy: B-
For the 230-mile round trip (virtually all highway, and apart from a few miles of slow-moving traffic, moving along nicely at 70-75 mph), the SX4 averaged 26 mpg against the EPA highway estimate of 28 mpg.

Note: The 2010 SX4 AWD automatic will be a CVT, and mileage estimates improve to 23 city, 29 highway and 25 combined, versus our '09 with a4-speed automatic's 21/28/24.

Navigation System: B
A bit of a reach to access, so if I had an address to enter I would detach it (it's removable from the car) and type away, obviously when I was sitting parked. Andthanks to its simple, intuitive layout, entering addresses and finding gas stations and yes, Starbucks, were quick work. The voice prompts, however,sound like they're from a 1980's voice synthesizer.The Suzuki 's Max Headroom iscertainly notassmoothly spokenasthe lady inour Honda Fit'snav system. Then again, the SX4's system came standard as opposed to commandinga near-$2,000 premium as with the Fit.

Bluetooth:C
It's nice that the system automatically downloads your phone numbers (no, they don't all do that).However,the transmission quality was sometimes rather poor.At times, the person on the other end couldn't hear me that clearly,prompting one to say that it sounded like I was underwater.Or that I was Charlie Brown's teacher.