The Celerio is best suited to being an urban or town car – city cars don’t work as well as longer distance or motorway cars. All Celerios come with a one litre engine, perfect for short journeys at the city speed limit, and you can have either a manual or automatic gearbox. Very few cars can offer the same amount of space and practicality for €11,995 – in fact we cannot think of even one other model that can. Suzuki’s reputation for simple engineering and its Japanese reliability will all give Mums confidence that it will serve the family inexpensively and with no fuss.
City cars generally have quite small boots so fitting; a double buggy for example, wouldn’t be possible. The height of the Celerio means that you could possibly remove the parcel shelf and stand something like that up if you needed to, although it may obscure your rear visibility. Otherwise the boot as you can see will take a few school bags or a bit of shopping no problem. We found a storage cubby to the right of the steering wheel which is a perfect fit for an iPhone, while the glove box is big, too. The cup holders are on the floor so you have to reach down to get your drink, but at least they don’t get in the way of the gear lever or any of the buttons like on some cars.
With its wide-opening back doors it is much easier than you might think to fit a baby chair into the back seats of a small car, while the high roof line means there’s lots of space for parents to work in when bolting the seat in place or fastening seat belts. It is quite easy to reach the baby from the driver’s seat if needs be as the rear seats are quite close to the front ones. Like in bigger cars there are two ISOFIX child seat mounts in the back.
Is parking easy?
The Celerio has all the ingredients required to be a Mums car park dream machine. It is very short so can squeeze into even the smallest spots, while the high driving position means seeing everything around you whilst manoeuvring is easy. The rear window is really big and is straight in line with the rear bumper, so no guesswork required as to how much space you have to the car behind, while the short bonnet means swinging in and out of the supermarket parking space is no problem. Top marks!
The Celerio scored a rather low 3 stars out of five in the Euro NCap safety test, but there are mitigating circumstances – the particular model tested had no side air bags fitted which are standard on the Irish car, and would have resulted in the car being awarded four stars. The test did indicate that the basic structure of the car is solid in an accident. As with many budget cars there are compromises – modern safety technologies like automatic city braking are not featured, although there is traction and stability control along with brake force distribution, all of which are recognised as crucial in helping to prevent the driver losing control of the car.
Verdict:
Thumbs Up:
Very spacious for such an inexpensive car
High driving position and simple to operate and park
Wide opening rear doors make fitting a child seat easy
Cheap to run
Thumbs down
Interior a bit dated
Baby friendliness: 3/5
Safety: 3/5
Cool rating: 2.5/5
Passenger and storage space: 4/5
Car park friendliness: 5/5
Value for money: 4/5
Overall rating: 21.5/30
Statistics: (Republic of Ireland market)
Price (starting from / our test car): €11,995 / €12,995
Average Fuel Economy and tax: 64MPG, €190 road tax per annum
Warranty: 3 years / 100,000km
Isofix baby seat mounts: 2
Seats suitable for adults (excl driver): 3
Seats suitable for kids only: 1