The Grand Tour

James May Says Suzuki Celerio Is Cool Enough for DriveTribe

Horsepower isn’t always fun.  Well, that depends on context of course.  Scantily dressed girls in high horsepower cars on YouTube seem to have a blast.  But in the end, it’s thrown away money on gas, tires, and brakes for those few seconds of fun.

Being broke, isn’t fun.

James May, a fan of the Dacia Sandero and Fiat Panda, has found another small car that he enjoys, the Suzuki Celerio.

I admit that my early days of driving were filled with supreme Japanese reliability in the form of a Corolla.  Was it fun to drive in terms of general ability?  No.  But at least I could go full-throttle without breaking speed limits and laugh at the horrendous understeer at every corner.

As it turns out, after four days of test drives, May thinks similarly of the Suzuki Celerio.

But one of the most memorable drives of 2016 came right at the start of the year; memorable because it revealed a shortcoming in me. And I’m afraid it was in a 1.0-litre Suzuki Celerio. My 140-character Twitter road test of the time said ‘Surprisingly thrashable with amusing engine and low costs, let down by dreary interior door panels’. I was right. The interior door panels on the Celerio are really low rent. But let’s look into this a bit further. – James May, DriveTribe

Now that I think of it, I miss getting 30 miles per gallon and not having to worry about running costs on a car.  That Corolla I used to drive can all be found on the local Craigslist ads with nearly 200,000 miles. The Suzuki Celerio isn’t available in the United States.

But, there’s one car that come to mind when it comes to low-powered, Japanese, four-door hatchbacks.  Perhaps a Mazda 2 wouldn’t be so bad.

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