2018 Suzuki Vitara vs 2019

What's the difference?

The Vitara is fun and easy to drive, plus it’s good value and practical. But if the lack of advanced safety equipment is a deal breaker for you, hang on until 2019 when the updated Vitara arrives. That said, you can pretty much guarantee Suzuki will drop the price when this current Vitara goes into run-out mode, and you could get a damned good deal.

The sweet spot in the range is the S Turbo FWD - it lists for less than $29K and has all the features of the AWD including that great 1.4-litre turbo-petrol engine.

My eyes always light up when my inbox dings with news of a Vitara. It's a refreshing, honest car that does its job really well. While I sometimes struggle with the pricing, the 2019 re-jig has brought a few bits and pieces - like the cool Alcantara seat trim - and an uplift in quality over the older cars. Its interior space is competitive with the best in the class, as are the ride and handling.

The Vitara Turbo is easily the best of the range's trio, unless you really need the all-wheel drive of the Allgrip. The Turbo takes all the good bits of the base model, eliminates its biggest problem (the engine) and adds a whole heap of safety gear. 

The Vitara’s tough and uncomplicated looks are refreshing in a segment where the styling of many small SUVs is full of softened features such as those of the HR-V, or totally left of field and busy like the C-HR or Kona.

The Vitara’s look is simple. There’s the sweep of the grille through the large headlights, there’s the flat bonnet and cleanly designed front bumper with integrated daytime running lights and fog lights. 

The pumped-up wheelarches with their plastic extensions and the stepped-up contour pressed into the panels running toward the rear accentuates the car's width. And a high waistline and tall windows adds a whiff of Range Rover. 

Only the rear of the car looks like it could do with more work. I can’t unsee the exhaust pipe hanging down underneath, and those taillights look half finished. 

The front starts off so well, but the back is disappointing. Look at the images, don’t you feel it, too?

There are four colours offered, including the 'Atlantis Turquoise Pearl Metallic' our RT-S and S Turbo FWD wore and the 'Savannah Ivory Metallic' of our S-Turbo Allgrip, which my family renamed Electric Brown. 

Just an FYI – that Electric Brown was so good at hiding dirt I almost didn’t need to clean it before taking the images for this review, and that was after 700km covering dirt road shenanigans, gravel running and the daily urban commuter grind.

The two-tone combinations are cool – the black roof option ($995 extra) looks great. You can also get a 'Rugged Pack' which adds a tough body kit and front skid plate.

To tell the difference between an RT-S and the S Turbo from the outside look at the wheels and grille. The top-spec car has the black wheels and chrome grille, while the base grade has the alloys and grey grille.  
From the inside the top-grade S Turbo has red accents to the air vents and seat stitching.

About that interior – it’s a pretty cheap feeling place with the hard plastics on the dash and doors. The RT-S has cloth seats and the top-grade cars have leather seats and a small amount of suede trim to the doors, but not enough to cover the vast expanses of plastic.

There’s something you should know. In 2019 an updated Vitara will arrive and that hard plastic dashboard will be replaced by a soft-touch one. There will also be a significant safety equipment update. So, unless you need to buy a Vitara right now, maybe wait until the updated version arrives in 2019. You can read our news story on the updated Vitara here.

At almost 4.2m long, 1.8m wide and 1.6m tall the Vitara’s exterior dimensions are almost identical to the Kona – but I found the Vitara more practical and spacious. Read on to find out more.

You used to be able to get a soft top version of the Vitara, but not any more, sadly, the're all hardtops now.

The Vitara wears its SUV heritage proudly, with a blocky, 8-bit aesthetic I'm quite partial to it, but not everybody I've spoken to is. That's okay, the clamshell bonnet is one of those cool design things that most people don't care about until you point it out.

The 2019 update left the styling mostly alone, with just a mild bumper-and-grille change and solid red rear-light clusters that took some getting used to, yet added a bit more '80s arcade-game cred.

The cabin is entirely conventional and, again, in 2019, has had little done to it. Suzuki says the the dash is less hard and that's fine, if not especially important. The diamond shapes in the Alcantara-trimmed seats are classy, though. It's an honest cabin that doesn't try to do anything fancy.

All Vitaras come with roof racks as standard, but when was the last time you saw anybody use them? Nope, the true test of practicality is the space inside.

The Vitara’s boot has a 375-litre luggage capacity which is 14L more than the Kona’s cargo space. What does that mean in real world terms? It was enough for two adults and their four-year old to have a weekend away with a large overnight bag, computer bag, scooter and grocery shopping.

Fold the second row down and you have 710 litres of space which leads me to a bit of a confession – I slept in our S Turbo Allgrip overnight at a hot rod festival in the bush. It was a choice between sleeping on the ground or in the Vitara. It was below freezing and I’m a giraffe at 191cm but I slept like a baby in my Vitara tent with the seats down rugged up in my sleeping bag – see the image.

Under the boot floor, as well as a space saver spare wheel, there is another storage area and either side of the cargo area are plastic storage bins for muddy shoes and wet swimmers. The boot has a light and a 12-volt outlet as well.

With the rear seats up legroom in the back is great for the class. I can just sit behind my driving position without my knees touching the seat back, which I can’t do in the Kona. Headroom is excellent in that second row, too.

Cabin storage in the Vitara is great, with two cupholders up front, giant bottle holders in all doors and plenty of trays and hidey-holes to place wallets, coins and other bits and pieces. You’ll find a USB port and another 12-volt outlet in the front, too.

The only weakness is a lack of cupholders in the rear and covered storage areas in the cabin apart from the glove box. This meant having to take valuables out and put them in the boot where they were shielded by the cargo cover.

The Vitara's cabin is very spacious, especially given its modest external footprint. It's amazing how much space you can liberate when you've got a high roof and you can lift the rear seats for a more natural seating position.

Front seat passengers have plenty of headroom and without the Allgrip's sunroof, it's quite lofty. You also have two cupholders and a space for your phone under the climate-control switches. There's also a new sliding armrest, which doubles as a cover for a storage bin.

The back seat is fairly sparse. Bereft of cupholders and an armrest, you'll be holding your own coffees back there. And keeping your inboard elbows to yourself. Rear leg and knee room are excellent for a car this size, with plenty of space for me at 180cm and even for our resident tattooed totem pole, Richard Berry, who stands another 11cm taller.

Each door has a bottle holder for a total of four. 

The boot is one of those split-level arrangements, with a false floor under which you can hide valuables or, given the lifestyle vibe, wet towels/muddy boots/sandy boogie boards. You don't know how useful that is until you use it, let me tell you.

Cargo space starts at a very useful 375 litres (beaten only by the Honda HR-V and the Nissan Qashqai) and is way above the tiny hatchback boot of the CX-3's. Fold the rear seats and space increases to 1120 litres. 

The MY19 model re-organisation of the Suzuki Vitara range means that the Turbo is the middle, at $29,990, but quite a step up from the base model with its naturally aspirated 1.6-litre engine. It's also significantly cheaper than the Allgrip I reviewed recently.

Standard are 17-inch wheels, Alcantara and fake-leather trim, six-speaker stereo, auto wipers and headlights, climate control, adaptive cruise, heated and folding rear vision mirrors, LED headlights, keyless entry and start, hill-descent control, (ill-fitting) sunglasses holder, sat nav and a space-saver spare.

Apple CarPlay and Android Auto make a very welcome appearance on the 7.0-inch touchscreen, which is soldiering on after a few years in Suzuki dashboards.

The Vitara RT-S is powered by a 1.6-litre four-cylinder petrol that makes 86kW/156Nm. The S-Turbo (FWD and 4WD) has a 1.4-litre four-cylinder turbo-petrol producing more grunt at 103kW/220Nm.

I don’t know you that well, but I think you should go for the turbo. I found the regular four-cylinder to be thirsty (more on that below) and a little underpowered. 

The turbo engine isn’t a rocket by any means. It provides adequate power, with performance helped by the Vitara’s light weight. The AWD is the heaviest in the range, yet still only weighs 1.2 tonnes.

I put more than 750km on the clock of the S Turbo AWD in a week and most of it was done with my four-year old and wife on board, plus and a full boot of luggage. It wasn’t often I felt it lacked horsepower – apart from the time I was mid-three-point turn on a country road just as a low flying Commodore came over the hill, approaching at warp speed. I had to call on every kilowatt to get us moving safely.

Don’t assume 4WD means the Vitara is a capable off-roader. The system is all-wheel drive with torque distributed to wheels on demand, without the centre diff found on hardcore off-roaders. There are four modes to the Allgrip system: Auto, Sport, Snow and Lock. Hill descent control is also standard on the AWD Vitara.
   
The RT-S comes with a choice of five-speed manual or six-speed automatic transmission. The S Turbo is only available with the (torque converter) auto, which adds more fun to the driving experience relative to the C-HR and HR-V's CVT autos, even if the Vitara's auto uses more fuel. 

How much fuel does the Vitara use? Read on.

As with the Allgrip, the Turbo ships from Hungary with the 1.4-litre turbo four-cylinder Boosterjet engine, a vast improvement on the 1.6-litre in the base model. You have way more power here, with 103kW and a comparatively muscular 220Nm.

The front wheels get their twist via a six-speed automatic, which is shared with whole range.

I test drove the RT-S, S Turbo FWD and S Turbo AWD.

Over 763km of country roads, motorways and daily city commutes the tripmeter was reporting an average of 6.8L/100km. Suzuki's claimed average consumption over a combination of urban and open roads is 6.2L/100km.
 
After 143km in the S Turbo FWD I recorded a higher 10.9L/100km average, but that included fewer motorway kays and more inner city driving. The official combined mileage is 5.9L/100km.

The RT-S recorded the highest fuel consumption, not helped by the fact most of my driving was on suburban roads, the trip computer recording an average of 14.3L/100km. On top of that, my desire for more oomph led me to constantly feed it more fuel in the hope it might move faster.

The official combined-cycle figure for the Vitara Turbo is 5.9L/100km, which is within a tenth of the much less powerful base model. Unencumbered with even a simple stop-start system to reduce fuel usage, we've consistently found the turbo engine will deliver a fuel figure in the low-eights, with the two-wheel-drive Turbo returning 8.1L/100km.

Here’s the short version for people not interested in technical stuff: the Vitara is great fun and easy to drive. And that goes for the RT-S and the S Turbo.
 
The reason the Vitara is easy to drive can be broken down into: i) great visibility through those large windows and over the flat bonnet, ii) the driving position which is fairly high, and iii) the small size of the car which makes it easy to park and pilot through city streets.

It’s fun to drive because: i) the steering is accurate and returns an in-touch feeling with the road; ii) the ride is comfortable with good body control and decent handling for the class, and iii) that six-speed auto is so much more engaging than a CVT. 

The choice for me is the AWD S-Turbo. I had a hoot driving it on the same roads that I normally test sports cars on and while it’s no performance car, I was grinning the entire time.

I didn’t test the AWD’s off-road capability more than taking it down onto the beach and for a bit of dirt road driving. I wouldn’t recommend venturing into much tougher terrain than that in the Vitara. If you do want to go further afield, and want to do it in a Suzuki, the new Jimny will be more adept.

Do you need to spend the extra $4k to have an all-wheel drive Vitara? Nope, you don't need to. But if it was my money, I'd fork out the extra for the added traction AWD brings in the wet.

Here's a real-world example. The FWD S Turbo spun its front wheels trying to climb the steep incline on my test route. The surface (bitumen) and conditions were dry. On the same hill, under the same conditions, the AWD didn't lose traction at all.

If you've stepped out of the base model and into the Turbo, as I did, it's like night and day. While the base version has a good equipment level, it's badly let down by the underpowered 1.6-litre engine. The turbo 1.4 is so much better. Smooth and torquey, it makes much lighter work of the 1100kg-plus car and gives the automatic transmission a lot more to work with.

While it's a lot better than the 1.6, it loses almost nothing to the more expensive Allgrip. As it's front-wheel drive its off-road capability is rather curtailed, but the bonus is you can save a lot of money and some headroom if you don't need part-time all-wheel drive.

The Turbo drives as well as the rest of them and rides as well, too. It handles very securely on a decent set of tyres. The ride on this car is one of the most surprising things about it, with a smooth, easygoing gait. Cars as light as the Vitara can get a little bit bouncy and out of control, particularly on broken urban surfaces, but not this one.

While the body can roll around a bit in harder cornering, it's never chuck-inducing and, if you're a driver who likes a bit of fun, the Vitara delivers, with light steering and a reasonably eager chassis. It's all bit unexpected, even if you've driven one before.

You do sit ridiculously high in the driver's seat, something my wife mentioned. Normally she sits a little higher than me but complained the seat must be stuck. Nope, that's just how it is. You sit really high and, for some, that's uncomfortable.

The Vitara Turbo has six airbags, ABS, stability and traction controls.

As part of the 2019 update, the turbo-engined cars added to the spec sheet forward AEB, lane-departure warning, adaptive cruise, blind-spot monitoring, weaving alert and reverse cross traffic alert.

You also get three top-tether anchor points and two ISOFIX points.

The Vitara scored five ANCAP stars in July 2016.

The Vitara is covered by Suzuki’s three-year/unlimited kilometre warranty. Servicing is capped for five years but Suzuki recommends six month/10,000km intervals between them. Most carmakers only ask that you service the vehicle annually.

Services are capped for five years at $175 each for the first three visits, then $359, $175, $379, $175, $399, then $175 for the last two in that period.

Suzuki offers a three-year/100,000km warranty, but that's just the start. If you continue to service it at Suzuki every six months/10,000km, the warranty will go for as long as five years/100,000km. 

Suzuki's servicing regime works out at about $472 per year - most services are $175, with a couple of services at $359 and $399.