Maruti Suzuki Celerio in India Test Drive Review

Well country’s largest car manufacturer Maruti Suzuki also decideded to add a little bit of convenience to our life. This convenience is called the Celerio. Now this is a hatch back that comes with an automated gear box and is actually fuel efficient. So today we will going to find out if this automated gear box is actually a convenience for us on the road or not.

The Maruti Suzuki Celerio has replaced the A-Star and the Zen Estilo in the market, on the look of it, it comes with fine and neat lines, and there is not much of design language to boost of. The Celerio looks wider and taller that other Hatchbacks in market that are in the competitions. The total length of the Celerio is 3600 MM and it stands 1560 MM tall.

Well now if you look at the Celerio, there is not much of designing to boost about, first you look at it and you can easily recognize it to be a very typical Maruti, you see you get standard grill, you get the same set of Lamps in fact if you get a closer look to it you will as a Maruti took a box, Put Zen Estilo in it, put  Alto 800 in it mixed it very well and pop it out, The Celerio.

Even the side profile has not much to talk about, in fact it’s a little too plain. It does come with the large windows and windows can roll down completely so that the passengers in rear seat do not feel suffocated. Well another thing that impresses me a lot about this new Celerio is that the amount of space that you get in this car. Well you don’t get this kind of space in any other car that it is competing with. This seat has been adjusted to my height and there is good amount of knee space here and good amount of headroom here and the seats are actually comfortable with enough thigh support and enough thimble support. So this is a car that can seat three adults and it can do it quite comfortably.

On the rear, the lamp stands tall on the both sides of the boot door. There is no lever to open the boot from the cabin. You get a boot handle on the door only.

Now let’s hit the road to find out how this automated gear box really works. This segment’s first technology has created quite a buzz since its launch. The difference between an automated and automatic gear box is that in an automated gearbox the gear shifts happen through an electronic hydraulic unit placed on top of the gear box. There are two advantages of it, one that’s it maintains engine almost at par with the manual and second it doesn’t compromise on fuel efficiency. Now the Celerio spark with same K10 engine that we are all familiar with. For the figures it’s the 68 BHP output and a 90 NM of torque. When you take it out on the road, in the city it is sufficient even on the highway its not bad. In fact if you are driving in the automated version, the gearing is a little long so it gives you the that extra little power which is needed when you are overtaking of maneuvering in the city and it adds as a benefit when you are on the highway as well. This automated gearbox on the Celerio isn’t very smooth unit though. There is an evident hick up in the car when there is an up shift in the gear, the down shift is rather smooth in comparison. Its small size is easily to maneuver in the city and a turning radius of 4.7 Mtrs makes it very easy to park as well. The car is quite easy to drive in the city, the steering is nice and responsive, and it is not very precise you have to give it regular inputs but it does the job quite decently. It easy to cut and corner in fact it is quite easy to park as well. You also get a manual transmission option here, where you can change gears as per your desire RPM levels for that extra punch if needed at all. But mostly automated gear box which is made for the Celerio, which is a first time thing that Maruti has introduced in Celerio is very convenient. If you are driving in the manual mode and have to come to a sudden halt then the gear drops to the first on its own without an input. Another good thing about the Celerio is the suspension, the Celerio takes bumps with the ease and ride quality is very good. Around corners, it feels confident and on high speed also it does manage to remain calm and composed. The engine sure get noisy once you push this 1000 cc engine beyond its comfort zone. One more pick stop before we wrap to run you through the features of Celerio.

This is the automated top variant which is the VXI, it sufficiently loaded with all four power windows, the Kenwood music system that you see here is not standard and neither speakers. How ever there are two cup holders in the front and one bottle holder just behind the hand brake. The dials are big and easily readable; they display average fuel economy, door hazard warning etc. The rear seat is 60:40 split for bigger luggage otherwise there is sufficient boot space of 235 Litres. The air conditioning is manual only and there is soothing ambient light in the cabin. Now there are a lot of reasons behind the popularity of the Maruti Suzuki Celerion, for starters we live in a country which is obsessed about fuel efficiency and in fact the Maruti Suzuki is the one that came out with punch line asking “Kitna Deti Hai”. Well to answer that question, Celerio in mix conditions City and the Highway returned us an economy of almost 16 KMPL which I personally believe is phenomenal for a car of this class. The 2^nd thing about the Celerio is the fact that its price is just about to right. The ZXI version is only available in the manual. The top variant which you can buy in automated gear box is VXI which we have with us and it just priced at 4.43 lakh ex showroom Delhi. So that price is very competitive. It is spacious, it is comfortable and it is fuel efficient.