WASHINGTON — This week’s column was to feature the 2010 Hyundai Tucson, a vastly improved compact crossover utility vehicle driven earlier in December in California. But it was upstaged by a blizzard and an unlikely hero back home in suburban Virginia:

Meet the 2010 Suzuki SX4 Sportback, a little wagon with lots of heart.

I’ll say up front that I was disappointed to find the SX4 Sportback in my driveway after returning from California. I drove its sibling SX4 Sport sedan last year and was not impressed. It was a cheap-feel economy car masquerading as a sexy performance automobile — more hype than reality and no match for comparable Ford Focus, Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla models in the real world.

But that was the 2008 SX4 Sport sedan.

The 2010 SX4 Sportback wagon is something else. It competes well with everything in its class.

Fit and finish in the 2010 wagon are discernibly superior to what I experienced in the 2008 sedan. There is much less engine noise and vibration, although there is more engine horsepower (150 now vs. 143 then) and more torque (140 foot-pounds vs. 136).

Suzuki has long offered more amenities than expected in an economy car, such as onboard navigation with real-time traffic and weather information, which also are found in the new SX4 Sportback wagon. But in this iteration, it all seems to make more sense.

My wife, Mary Anne, thinks I have a more favorable opinion of the SX4 Sportback because it did something I never thought it could or would do: It performed beautifully in the recent East Coast blizzard. She may be right.

I panicked when snow started falling late that Friday night. I worried about nasty, slippery, side streets quickly accumulating snow. With chagrin I considered the car — a compact, front-wheel-drive wagon, 150-horsepower four-cylinder engine, six-speed manual transmission, four-wheel disc brakes, 17-inch diameter wheels shod with “all season” radial tires. Great for dry weather, I thought. But I figured it would get trumped by the snow.

I was wrong. The car maintained its footing on wet, icy roads, never once hinting at skidding or swerving out of control. On several side streets where snow was accumulating quickly, the SX4 Sportback displayed remarkable stability over what was fast becoming bumpy, lumpy compacted road ice.

The bottom line: Here’s suggesting that Suzuki drop the pocket-rocket marketing hype and emphasize the SX4 Sportback’s solid, real-world virtues. It is one of the best, most gutsy, most affordable urban wagons available.

Complaint: Perhaps I’m greedy, but I think a small four-cylinder wagon with a factory weight of 2,732 pounds should get better than 22 miles per gallon in the city and 30 miles per gallon on the highway. More-efficient diesel technology would raise the cost of this one and threaten its “economy car” status. But it would add greatly to its value.

2010 Suzuki SX4 Sportback

Price: $17,949; as tested: $18,984

Type: Compact, front-engine, front-wheel-drive wagon with four side doors and a rear hatch.

Engine: A standard 2-liter, inline four-cylinder engine serves the Sportback wagon and Sport sedan. The engine develops 150 horsepower at 6,200 rpm and 140 foot-pounds of torque at 3,500 rpm. Six-speed manual transmission is standard.

Mileage: 22 miles per gallon in the city, 30 highway.