My wife and kids are currently in Thailand while I toil away here. I awoke this morning to a text from them that included a few pictures of them and their rental car. I had no idea they were planning on driving anywhere and was immediately intrigued so I requested more pictures and information but got no response as my morning is their night and vice versa…I figured they’ve seen me do this and should know the drill by now so I expected more later and they didn’t disappoint.
So I quickly figured out that this is a Suzuki Celerio, the smallest car that Suzuki makes. Apparently it is built in Thailand as well as India and Pakistan. Introduced in 2014, it’s a “City Car”, i.e. the smallest class of cars but larger than some of the competition. I have to say the front shot looks great, this looks to be a thoroughly modern car.
This picture is the last of the initial three, the others are from the end of their day just before they returned the car. I’m thinking this car is similar to the Mitsubishi Mirage that we currently get in the states. In the markets it is available in it competes with the Hyundai i10, Chevy Beat, Ford Figo, and Honda Brio amongst others.
This is from the new set of pictures after a day of driving along muddy roads on the island of Koh Lanta. I’m impressed they opened the hood for us. The engine is a 1.0liter 3-cylinder, in effect similar to the VW Polo I drove in Iceland a few years back. However, this one supposedly has 68hp which is quite a bit more than the Polo’s 60 (13% more!) There is also a twin-cylinder diesel available. They got an automatic which is either an automated manual or a CVT, (a manual 5-speed is also available).
It appears that they got the high-zoot version with power windows and some sort of radio. The seats look comfortable.
I’m not sure why I got pictures of a muddy floormat but it appears the rental car came equipped with rubber mats. The seat still looks comfortable. The mats started out clean but the roads were muddy and they got in and out of the car during the day.
The back seat area looks fairly roomy, certainly large enough for kids and likely adults as well as long as they aren’t expecting Cadillac Fleetwood room.
One cupholder. No wonder Suzuki didn’t make it in America. More muddy floormats.
Trunk looks roomy enough. This isn’t the car for the IKEA run but to get a few coconuts or whatever from the market it’ll suffice.
The materials looks tough and durable. Exactly what you want when you need to maximize value for the dollar. Or baht. The outside looks solid as well, I suppose it needs to be to withstand attacks from monkeys such as the one they witnessed in town as they were having lunch. People feed the monkeys (against advice) and then stop feeding them and try to leave and the monkey wants more food so ends up attacking the car. It was a highlight of the day, serves those other tourists right.
After driving around all day on muddy roads on an island that is 35km long (or around?) it apparently took 4 liters of fuel to get the fuel level two bars higher to again match what it started at. That sounds pretty good but is all the info I could get on fuel economy. 4 liters = 2 bars = all good.
The rental fee was $40 for the day which is probably pretty good for a walk-up rate. The car worked well, is red, and even has a rear wiper. When pressed about more details regarding driving impressions, handling, acceleration, noise levels, and the sort of stuff we are all interested in, I was told “It was nice.” So there you have it, when in Thailand, look up the above rental car company and get yourself a nice car!
Ah ha! No wonder you have time to go wrecking yard prowling… 🙂
I’m allowed an outing a week to decompress. And usually take more than one set of pictures! But I am supposed to be hanging some cabinets right now instead of reading this….
Even has vent shades, aftermarket like the mats?
It is annoying that they put that big sticker pretty much right where you want to be able to see out of an already tiny window. They could have stuck it in the right lower corner, done a cut out, or a thin strip put at the top or bottom of the glass. That way the rear view mirror might be useful.
I can imagine the fuel mileage for the 2 cylinder diesel engine combined with manual transmission would be great
The British magazine Car says this has all the handling vigor of a B&Q wheelbarrow. They gave it 2 out of 5 stars.
If this was rebadged as the second generation Aston Martin Cygnet, CAR would be falling all over themselves to award it top honors in the G/B/U charts. 😀. But thank you for the context, I hadn’t looked up what anyone else said about it. It apparently was nice enough to drive around muddy roads on a Thai island and make it back!
Just saw a YouTube video where this Suzuki was tested against 4 competing cars. The tester gave it high marks for the fuel economy….and that was about it. It was dinged for having manual windows and mirrors, and the “standard” in car entertainment looked like a cheap aftermarket unit.
But in fairness, it was the cheapest of the 5 cars.
I’d ding the tester for complaining about the lack of power windows and mirrors. What do you do when they stop working and they will one day.
The range of cars Suzuki make is immense and bewildering, most versions wash up here eventually and Ive seen this badge but took no notice of it, I’m also trying to think of anything built recently as a passenger car that isnt equipped with sounds or power windows, nothing so far. That interior looks typical low grade Japanese to me sparse functional and hard wearing its one of the things the Japanese do really well. The two cylinder diesel with manual probably doesnt use any fuel at all small capacity diesels are amazing for economy.
honestjohn.co.uk rates it at 78mpg(i) or 62mpg(U.S.), 13.5 sec to 60 MPH, or 16.5 if automatic, describes the ride and handling as “good” (as compared to the Mirage which they described as “disappointing”)
It had a few frightening recalls: brake pedal box collapse? oy!
All in all a worthy update to the Geo Metro of the nineties.
Suzuki has a large presence in devolving countries and for good reason: the cars are considered to be practically indestructible. I drove a Celerio rental around the area of my winter residence, on southern Mindanao, Philippines. If felt very peppy with the 1.0 engine and manual transmission. Plenty of space inside, too.
I wonder why Suzuki could never go it alone in North America?
Short answer; the rebranded Daewoos GM forced on them killed what good name they had stone dead.
Too bad, the Kizashi was (undeservedly) an also-ran but the SX4 AWD carved itself a solid niche and the secondgen that debuted right after they withdrew would’ve built on that as an early stake in the burgeoning small-CUV market. That being said, there’s not much else in their line that appeals to American buyers when gas is cheap and credit is easy.
A close friend had a 2005 Aerio that went well over 300,000 km without a major failure. Not even an alternator or starter failure. She sold it because she was bored of it, not because it was dead. She still sees it bombing around with a young owner.
The stuff made in Ingersol at the CAMI plant was legendary in Canada. Loads of it was sold in the 1990’s but the sheer pedestrian nature of these cars was to be used and then crushed.
It looks like a happy little car. Looks-wise, it’s not bad. For me on a modern car that is high praise. In fact, the newest very small cars seem to have more thought put into their styling than the bigger stuff.
That sticker is very much in the way of visibility, and just silly.
It was nice of your family to think of you and send the pics.
I bought a 2015 model suzuki celerio. Ive had no regrets.. i live in inner sydney where street parking is a problem. Petrol consumption excellent.. its a great little car. Recommend it 2 any person..
How nice of your family to travel halfway around the world in search of a CC-worthy topic! It would have been a mighty disappointment if they rented a car in Thailand and it wound up being a Chevy Cruze.
As plain as this Suzuki is, I enjoy looking at pictures of an example in everyday use. It’s unlikely, after all, that I’ll ever see a Celerio in real life. It’s really not a bad-looking car — looks well-proportioned for a little car. For getting around an island, it seems like a good choice. Hope they enjoy the rest of their trip!
For many, many people, a car is nice if when you get in, it works as a car, every time. And boy, does Suzuki have that wrapped up. You just never hear of a broken one, even at monster mileage on fleafart engines.They’ve long had a decent following here.
Not sure I could quite live with the Celery because of the fear factor when amongst the axles of everything else out there, though those sold here have 6 airbags and all the rest of the latest protector paraphenalia. Tested locally, the CVT auto got perfectly respectable reviews, and 47 mpg US in real use.
They had an unfortunate start to life, these. As mentioned above, it looks like Suzy underspecced the break-off point for the break-away pedals, so that in emergency testing by reviewers, the brake pedal broke and so the the broken brakes didn’t brake.
None made it to the public, and it relaunched a bit after, without the breaking brake breaking Suzuki. Which is nice.
I had one of these as a rental for 3 weeks shortly after I first arrived in the Netherlands. It was like driving a piece of Tupperware, and the little 3-pot was certainly not thrilled with highway speeds. It was certainly the cheapest-feeling car I’d ever driven. That being said, it was fun to drive in its own crappy way. The 5-speed was fun to row and the car was nimble and toss-able. Probably reliable enough too, being a Suzuki…but 3 weeks was enough.
Very nice. But in my mind, something called Celerio should be light green.
Shame about the name – sounds like something you’d make soup out of…….
I remember a distant cousin arriving at my door with a rental 3-pot something ( Pixo ? ) – “Mellow, you gotta drive this, if you rev it enough it sounds like a V12 Ferrari “
They also look like Chev Cadavalier tombstone buckets, from the rear.
This looks and sounds like a giant upgrade over much of what’s even recently been in that segment, though I’m having a hard time lovin’ that try-and-see-through-me rental car company advert plastered on the backglass.
This is not the smallest car that Suzuki makes, depending on the market, you can get different 660 cc Kei cars or the Alto (built in India) with 800cc.
The Celerio is a nice and rugged little car. It’s not the best in its class, but definitely the most rugged one. And the one with the best re-sell value.
My wife had one for almost two years. It never gave us a problem and had a very good fuel economy (combined 17km/l, about 40 MPG). I even drove it in longer trips and I couldn’t complain about feeling cramped or uncomfortable. You seat quite high and the visibility is very good. It’s a three-cylinder engine and it needs revving, but it’s not especially noisy or rough. Acceleration is good for city driving, but you always feel a bit underpowered in the highway (which is no wonder considering it’s a city-car). The suspension is definitely designed for bad roads (at least the Indian version arriving here in Chile), and has a good ground clearance (which was one of the reasons we chose it). This year, my wife decided she wanted a larger, 4WD car, and we sold the Celerio. Her new car is also a Suzuki, this time a Grand Nomade (5-dr Grand Vitara). A simple and very rugged SUV, but a horrible mileage,!