Suzuki Celerio Review

The Suzuki wins plenty of points when it comes to passenger space. Even if you’re very tall you’ll have no trouble getting comfy in the front seats – the driver’s seat comes with height adjustment as standard and you can tweak the steering wheel position to give you enough space for your knees, too.

The front seats come with a ratchet system for adjusting how much they recline. It makes it a little more difficult to find your ideal driving position than using a conventional twist wheel but it means you can spring from bolt-upright to lying down in less than a second – ideal if you ever find yourself taking part in an impromptu police stakeout.

Space in the back is nearly as generous as in the front. There’s much more head and leg room than you get in either a VW Up or a Hyundai i10 and the back doors open very wide so it’s easy to lift in a bulky rear-facing child seat. The Isofix anchor points are clearly marked too, so you won’t have any trouble sliding in the seat base first time.

There’s just enough room to carry three adults side-by-side in the back thanks to the Celerio’s narrow doors and there’s only a small lump in the floor to get in the way of your central passenger’s feet.

You get a few handy storage bins to help you keep the Celerio’s cabin neat and tidy. The glovebox is large enough to hold a one-litre bottle and there’s a handy storage tray under the dashboard for your phone with a 12V socket and (in SZ3 models and above) a USB port. You get a pair of small cupholders just behind the gear lever and there’s a third larger cupholder between the front seats for your passengers in the back to share.

Unfortunately, the door bins aren’t particularly spacious. There’s room in the back doors to store two small bottles on each side but the pockets in the front doors are very thin – you’ll struggle to squeeze in anything larger than a rolled-up newspaper.

The Celerio’s boot is reasonably spacious for such a small car. With the back seats in place you can fit 254 litres of luggage in its deep load bay – that’s slightly more than both the 252-litre Hyundai i10 and 251-litre VW Up can manage. There’s less of a boot lip to lift heavy luggage over in the Suzuki than in the Hyundai too, but you don’t get any handy hooks or netted cubbies to hold smaller items in place.

Still, there’s enough space to carry a baby buggy or a large suitcase without removing the parcel shelf and there’s just enough room for a few small soft bags under the boot floor.

You can flip the Suzuki’s back seats down in a two-way (60:40) split to let one passenger sit in the back alongside some very long luggage poking through from the boot. Flip both back seats down and the Celerio’s boot grows to 726 litres. It might not be quite as spacious as the Up’s 959-litre boot or the 1,046-litre load bay you get in an i10 but there’s still enough space – unbelievably – to carry a bike with its wheels attached – that’s if your front-seat passenger doesn’t mind moving their seat forward slightly.

Unfortunately, once you’ve folded the rear seats down there’s a large lump in the Suzuki’s boot floor that’ll make sliding heavy boxes right up behind the front seats a bit of a pain. There’s nowhere handy to store the parcel shelf either, so you’ll have to leave it behind if you’re carrying very tall items in the boot.

The Celerio comes with a 1.0-litre petrol engine producing 65hp. It’s far from the fastest small car on sale but it’s nippy enough to make light work of city driving. It’ll accelerate from 0-62mph in a not-particularly-thrilling 13.5 seconds but Suzuki claims it’ll return an impressive 65.7mpg – in normal driving you can expect to see a figure approaching 60mpg.

You can get a very slightly more powerful Dualjet version in SZ3 trim with 68hp that’ll reach 62mph from rest in 13 seconds but you’ll barely notice the difference in normal driving and it costs an extra £600. It only emits 84g of CO2 per kilometre compared to the standard car’s 99g.

Sadly, both engines are quite loud at speed and even the more powerful version has to work hard to keep up with motorway traffic. Both the VW Up and Hyundai i10 are available with more powerful engines that’ll be more suitable for long motorway journeys.

You can get the Celerio with an automatic gearbox for an extra £800 but it’s not particularly responsive and can cause the engine to rev loudly when you accelerate hard. It’s a little jerky at slow speeds too, which can make traffic jams more stressful than they ought to be. You’re better off saving yourself some cash and sticking to the manual.

You won’t have any trouble driving the Celerio around town. Its large windows and thin pillars between the doors and windscreen make it easy to see out of and a doddle to park – handy because you can’t get it with parking sensors or a reversing camera.

All the pedals are nicely spaced and the light steering makes it easy to thread through tight city streets. Unfortunately the steering can sometimes hesitate before returning to the straight-ahead position which doesn’t inspire much confidence on a winding country road.

The Suzuki’s rather stiff suspension can highlight bumps around town but does help stop its boxy body from leaning too much in tight corners. This’ll help stop your passengers from feeling car sick on long drives, too.

Head out onto the motorway and you’ll hear plenty of wind noise and a loud roar from the Suzuki’s tyres. It’s certainly less relaxing to drive at speed than a VW Up or Hyundai i10.

Unfortunately, it’s not quite as safe as these other small cars. The Celerio earned a three-star safety rating from Euro NCAP in 2014 compared to the four-star i10 and five-star Up. This is partly down to its lack of advanced active safety tech such as automatic emergency braking that’ll help stop the car quickly if it senses a vehicle in the road ahead. You also have to do without lane-keeping assist, cruise control or a speed limiter.