Maruti Suzuki Celerio Pros & Cons

Check out pros and cons about the Maruti Suzuki Celerio that are worth highlighting for a potential buyer. Here are some of the highlights of the benefits of buying the Maruti Suzuki Celerio. We'll also list out the Celerio drawbacks to help you make an informed buying decision.

Celerio Advantanges

• Standard Safety Features

  After the 2025 Model Year update, the Celerio gets 6 airbags as standard. The car also gets 3-point seatbelts for all occupants. While Maruti Suzuki were the first carmaker to promise offering 5x 3-point seatbelts in a car under Rs. 10.0 lakh (ex-sh) with their Fronx, Hyundai were actually the first ones to introduce this feature as standard in all of their cars — right from the Nios to the Ioniq 5. The Celerio is 2 years too late to join this party

• Insane Mileage Figures

  The Celerio offers some phenomenal ARAI mileage figures of 25-26kmpl with the petrol powertrains and more than 34kmpkg with the CNG-manual powertrain. With the addition of 20% ethanol (a.k.a. sugarcane juice) in petrol, you can bet that you won’t get anything close to these mileage figures in your daily use. But they do paint a picture of a promise of respectable mileage figures in the real world conditions.

• Simple Price, Variant Structure

  Like any other Maruti car, the Celerio also enjoys a simple variant lineup. This makes it easy for buyers to pick a variant based on their needs and budget.

• 3 Powertrain Options

  The Celerio brings 3 powertrain options to the table — a petrol-manual, petrol-AMT automatic & CNG-manual. The strong demand for CNG continues to keep the Celerio in the race. Although, the CNG bi-fuel option is only available in the VXI variant, which is not all that well equipped.

• Strong Long-Term Reliability

  The Celerio’s 1.0L petrol engine has been on sale for more than a decade and a half. This engine first debuted with the A-Star back in 2008 and you can rest assured that Maruti Suzuki have found and sorted out pretty much all of the bugs you can imagine. This makes the Celerio one of the most reliable cars you can buy at this price point.

• Wide Service Network

  Being a Maruti car, the Celerio enjoys the luxury of having access to the largest authorised service network in India with a reach that goes beyond metros, cities and towns as you can often find a service centre within easy reach of several villages.

• Ease Of Maintenance

  Besides a wide service network, the Celerio has a few other advantages. For instance, the Celerio’s engine is also available with the WagonR, Spresso and Alto K10. Together, they sell in such large numbers that you can find genuine, first-party spares as well as 3rd party ones from reputable suppliers. Moreover, the enormous number of Maruti service centres makes it very to find a competent mechanic even at a neighbourhood garage. So, you can have pretty much everything that’s wrong with your car with ease and at competitive prices.

• Respectable Ground Clearance

  In this day and age of SUVs, the Celerio fails to meet the expectations of most buyers with its hatchback body style. However, it isn’t as low to the ground that you would have to take immense care of it on rough roads. 170mm of clearance is quite respectable and can go over most bad roads, rough patches and tall speed breakers.

• Higher Variants Justify Incremental Cost

  Considering the base model the baseline for buyers interested in the Celerio, the higher variants seem to completely (or almost) justify the incremental cost over the base model. Usually, with Maruti cars, we have noticed that the base + 1 variant tends to do poorly in terms of value for money. But here, the VXI trim comes close to fully justifying the incremental cost with a 93% VFM score.

Celerio Disadvantanges

• Questionable Focus On Safety

  While the addition of 4 extra airbags and one extra seat belt makes the Celerio appear safer on paper, the lack of internally adjustable outside mirrors and a day/night inside mirror in the base model shows their stingy side. Both of these features add only a small cost but they tremendously help improve the road safety. It’s not like a ball joint mirror doesn’t show you what’s behind the vehicle. But, the fact that you have to roll down the windows to adjust them every time they make contact in traffic or every time they are folded makes it quite a tedious job and an annoyance. This makes it quite unlikely that the driver would adjust the mirrors every time they are driving. This behavioral issue is what makes it a fair bit unsafe and more likely to run into other road users.

  Similarly, the lack of day/night inside mirror would make it difficult to drive the car at night as the traffic following you would blind you with their high beams. This would either reduce your ability to see the road ahead clearly, or you can turn the inside mirror away and that severely affects your 360-degree awareness. The lack of both of these features could drastically affect your ability to safely drive on public roads. Moreover, considering the asking price of the Celerio, this omissions are unacceptable.

• Some Missing Features

  While the Celerio does carry a surprisingly high price for what it offers, its top variants still miss out on features such as TPMS, front armrest, auto AC, rear AC vents, adjustable rear headrests, rear camera and cruise control. Most of these features are available in the Tiago, which costs more or less the same as the Celerio.

• CNG Only In One Variant

  It’s nice to see that the Celerio offers a CNG bi-fuel engine option. But it’s only available in one variant and it’s not the reasonably-loaded and reasonably-priced ZXI variant. So, not only do Celerio CNG buyers have limited options, they also have to live with lower VFM score and a lot fewer features. The ZXI CNG variant would have added a music system with 4 speakers, rear defogger, rear washer wiper, steering-mounted controls, tilt steering, a tachometer and remote central locking. Most of these are must-have features considering the asking price (Rs. 6.90 lakh (ex-sh) and segment of the Celerio CNG.

• No CNG-Automatic Option

  Having the CNG bi-fuel option is one thing, but the Celerio seems severely lacking in this one area: it doesn’t have the CNG option with a manual transmission. The Tiago beats it here with this ground breaking powertrain option.

• No Usable Boot Space w/ CNG

  Just like the CNG-automatic powertrain option, a compact CNG car with a usable boot space is another space that’s exclusively available with the Tiago — at least in this price band.

• Bubbly Styling Is Not For Everyone

  The Celerio’s bubbly styling is cute and all but it’s not for everyone. And this shows in the sales numbers as the car is struggling to reach the glory days of the previous-generation model. With limited sales, you know that the Celerio could find its way to the chopping block if Maruti were to tighten the portfolio. And such a move can also affect the car’s resale value drastically.