Suzuki Vitara review – Interior & comfort
“The interior of the new Suzuki Vitara has some neat touches, but some plastics look and feel cheap”
The Suzuki is a comfortable car to drive around in, riding well at speed. All models are quiet when you settle into an A-road or motorway cruise and vibrations are kept to a minimum. The ride can be a little fidgety on imperfect roads, though.
Suzuki Vitara dashboard
The Suzuki Vitara has undergone various updates since 2015, when it first launched. The thing is, though, the interior is still rather drab and cheap-looking in places. The plastics on the doorcards and dashboard are scratchy, and there was even a noticeable mold line on the plastic element on the gear level you pull up to put the Vitara into reverse.
There are areas where you can tell Suzuki has made improvements to older versions of the Vitara, with a few more soft-touch plastics dotted around, and the attractive suede-style material on the middle of the seats in Ultra models, but it’s still not quite enough to make it feel high quality. That’s fine when the car is a budget-focused model, but when compared with a similarly-priced Mazda CX-30, for example, the difference is stark.
From behind the wheel, you’ll find the layout of the dashboard is logical – everything is where you'd expect it to be, and you still get physical dials, which could be part of the appeal for some. We don’t like the way you control the safety systems via a stalk from the corner of these dials though – it’s fiddly and you have to move it side to side to select different options on the small dot-matrix display between the analogue dials.
Equipment
The Vitara’s trim lineup is very simple compared to before, so now you just choose between Motion and Ultra models. Motion is well equipped with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, which is displayed on a nine-inch infotainment display, though it feels a bit dated. There’s also keyless entry and start, a rear parking camera and sensors, blind spot monitoring and adaptive cruise control.
Go for Ultra and you get larger 17-inch wheels, a panoramic sunroof which adds an airiness to the cabin and can open surprisingly wide, suede seat fabric, front parking sensors and electric folding mirrors among other additions.
Options
Suzuki offers a wide range of paint finishes for the Vitara, including a distinctive Solar Yellow colour. Two-tone colour combinations are also on offer, some of which might be described as an acquired taste. You can also specify the colour of the front grille, bumper garnishes, instrument-panel trim, air-vent trim and clock.
Technology
The Vitara’s infotainment system isn’t the sleekest looking setup and feels rather dated, but it’s logically laid out and pretty easy to use. 2024 updates to the Vitara introduced wireless smartphone connectivity, and you’d be better off using Android Auto and Apple CarPlay through the central screen.
While the Vitara comes with voice control, we found this a bit hit-and-miss when it came to recognising our spoken inputs. Hold the voice control button down while using Android Auto, though, and Google Assistant comes to the rescue, and is much better to use.
