My grandma is old. I know yours will be too. So, out went the Nissan March, and in came this! It’s not a stick! It’s even better! It’s an automated manual.

Buckle up ya fucks. You’ll need to, this thing is a ride.

So what exactly is a Suzuki Celerio? Well it’s a tiny little car. It’s beyond being an econobox, this thing is transportation. You have a 993cc inline 3 beast of mechanical engineering as its throbbing heart. It makes… uh… like 80-something horses. And I can’t be arsed to find what little torque it has. It weighs in at around 860kg and….

well…

No fuck this.

Look, throwing you any more physical specs would be a waste of time. No one outside of maybe Suzuki’s R&D team bothered to throw it around a skid pad, and the only things that matter to whoever is buying one of these abysmal cars is its 60-ish mpg and that fact that I could probably buy one with a check from donating sperm. It’s an almost as basic of a car as you can get.

And I don’t totally hate it. But more on that in a bit.

This thing is sketchy. They used to be built in India, until the gen 3 of this car. However, Pakistan and Thailand are apparently still churning these nuggets out. The Pakistani cars had the honor of being sold without airbags and ABS. They received a genuine 0 star Global NCAP safety rating! The ones with airbags supposedly got a 4/5, but I also supposedly ate dinner with the Sultan of Zanzibar. We had garbonzo beans btw. Questionably saftey aside, this thing is the automotive equivalent of kicking a crushed soda can down the road while you walk. You’re keenly aware that a Smart car has more structural rigidity and is probably a more refined ride.

Because the Celerio is a tall car tiny car, you sit fairly upright. And its tallness lends to its slab-sidedness, which likes to catch the wind. That’s right baby, we in yaw now. Gusts of wind require you to be vigilant at the wheel, meanwhile the poor Celerio is being blown across its lane. And then it rolls and wobbles. More so when you muster up enough balls to corner quickly. This took a while, as I only have one.

You then learn that this car is somewhat deceiving, and its center of gravity is fairly low. So as you corner, you feel the car start to roll below your ass’s upright position. And boy is it uncomfortable. Then you need to get back on the gas and shift, which leads us to the AMT!

Oh that transmission…

Why does this have an automated manual (or as Suzuki calls it, the AMT)? Wouldn’t the CVT and manual options suffice? Or like… a regular fwd slush box? But nope, what you have here is the economy car version of the “Ferrari F1 Transmission”. So a single clutch auto, where a computer controls the clutch and you can treat the transmission like a sequential. Is it faster than a regular auto? Uh… maybe on paper? It sure has hell ain’t smoother, and it’s utterly useless when left in auto mode. It’s a bit better in manual mode, downshifts are kinda quick. However you still feel the transmission taking its time, only for it to dump the clutch and jolt the whole car anyways. Under acceleration you feel a surge of revs (especially if you don’t lift between shifts) followed by a presumably unhealthy clunk. And it’s a five speed?! Like I get the platform came out in 2014, but a five speed? I thought the Great Recession killed all those.

The car didn’t last very long, outside of Pakistan and Thailand apparently. This second generation, aside from some of the crap I’ve rambled on about, wasn’t the most well received. People complained about the styling being outdated on launch, and yeah it hasn’t really aged gracefully from that time. A refresh “gen 3” came out a few years later, which looks like it might actually have some character in it.

So is there anything redeeming aside from its cheapness? Well, compared to the other car I’ve driven here in Uruguay, a 2024 Chevy Onix, this little Suzuki feels a bit faster. It’s not more reassuring through a corner, but that dinky little motor and 5 speed AMT pull this nothing weight box with enough urgency. You’ll find that it runs outta what little steam it has by, say 50-ish mph. But 90% of cars down here in Uruguay will do that. It’s also tiny, which helps squeezing into itty-bitty little parking spots and slithering through town.

The car also doesn’t feel unstable at “supposed 100-mph or around 160km/hr”**!! This occurred while following the already reviewed Chevy Onix through a busy “highway” to drop it back off at the rental place.

(** with no cross-wind present)

The inside is a sea of hard plastics and terrible digital buttons in to control infotainment. It’s also not “the most visually stimulating” place to be in. However the standard screen, while admittedly cheap, is a step up from the almost new rented Chevy Onix I mentioned. That head unit was somehow worse than my Subaru’s, which looked like a 2010 carryover. This touchscreen is kinda large and not that confusing to navigate. And has CarPlay somehow. Also, it shows this every time the car starts:

Yes, my little Celerio, you are my way of life.

As much as I want to and would probably be within character for me, I can’t get myself to hate this thing. Now, don’t get me wrong here. This Celerio a terrible car. There are more interesting takes on “basic transportation” than this thing. And I would take the manual Nissan March (Micra) that was replaced by this in a heart beat. But god was it entertaining in its shit-ness. I craved nothin more than the manual, a roll cage, and a race track full of twenty other Celerios (Celeri?) vying for position. It’s light and it really tries from behind the wheel to give its all. Like, I can’t be mad at it, it’s trying and it’s kinda cute doing so. It’s like a puppy trying to do my taxes with me. It has no concept of the IRS and yet will still bite at the agents at my door.

So that’s that really. It’s not as cheap and cheerful as some other tiny nuggets of the past, but it’s also kinda hard to despise this thing as two weeks of it. I do badly crave an ej257 though, after over two weeks of NA 1L i3 econoboxes though, enough that my eyes have been twitching. So till the next one!