For Christmas 2023, the family and I rented a house on St. Lucia for a week of warm weather, and bonded with a rented Vitara.
I’m not sure that this was a 2021. Since it is not a USA vehicle, there is no label in door jamb indicating date of manufacture. The insurance and registration documents in the glovebox described it as a “silver” 2021 Vitara. As you can see, it is not silver. Maybe those documents belonged to another car in the company’s fleet.
It seemed older than a 2021, but that may be owing to a rough life as a rental on the island. It looks good in the pictures, but the hood, front bumper, left front fender, left front door, liftgate, rear bumper, right rear quarter panel and right rear door had all been repainted and not very well.
St. Lucia plates have four digits, and maybe a letter or two (or not). Our car also had two soccer (futbol) balls, and the EU style GB name, though I never saw that on any other plates.
There was a good color match, but the finish on these panels had alternating areas of orange peel and runs, sanding marks, and bondo. The hood bounced and moved all around, with each bump. Maybe some adjustments to the latch would help that.
With about 41,000 indicated miles, it rode well and pretty quietly when there was a road (more on that later). Not sure what engine it has either, but the Suzuki website indicated it is probably a 1.3 liter or 1.6 liter four cylinder gas.
Helpful reminder label on the dash from the rental car company.
The vehicle was well equipped, with automatic, “All Grip” all wheel drive, LED running lights, General Motors grade A/C (it was 90 degrees F during the day), rear camera, blind spot monitoring, and the like.
There were cheap touches, such as the entire dash being hard plastic, including the black top which would have to be padded in a USA version. The floor covering was more like felt than carpet. The rear hatch was misshapen where hands would slam it closed, due to the thin gauge of the steel. Doors creaked and moaned when opening and closing.
I couldn’t decide if the body color section of the dash and rings around the vents was factory, or done later. The Suzuki website depicts the dash as having a fake carbon fiber pattern. The steering wheel looked to be in good shape under the vinyl add-on cover, which was flaking apart.
We were very happy with the house for the five of us. It had three large bedrooms, two bathrooms, a pool, and many outdoor spaces. It did not have windows or solid doors; what look like windows and doors above are just screens with wood louvers inside. It was up a public road that was quite rough, and mostly one lane wide, with a lot of blind curves. We were the last house on the long and steep road.
We did have a great view of the Pitons from the deck, though!
Pitons (Saint Lucia) – Wikipedia
We had to traverse a mostly one lane road to get to the beach at Anse Chastanet, about 20 minutes away.
It was a similar distance to the Massy grocery store in the closest town, Soufriere. This road was a mix of dirt, gravel, just plain rock, and areas of pavement here and there.
As for the paved portions……describing it is a challenge. It was like someone took five gallon buckets of cement, dumped them and spread them by hand. Very, very rough is the end result. Dirt would have been preferable.
The grocery store was an interesting experience, a mix of the very familiar and the less so. The only vegetables I recognized were carrots, broccoli, and celery. The meat case was full of cow and pig body parts I didn’t recognize (I pretty much stick to fish anyway), but the rest of the store was familiar products and brands. The Piton beer brewed on the island was very good.
We cleaned the store out of the Tostitos and Pace salsa. The wine selection was vast and inexpensive, all things considered.
There was lots of good car spotting everywhere you looked. Older Toyota Harriers (our Lexus RX) were pretty easy to find, as were Toyota Hi Lux pickups. There were a few Chevy Colorados in our travels (some left hand drive, some right hand drive), and a lone Dodge Avenger. Taxi services that cater to tourists were heavily third generation (2000-2006) Lexus LS sedans, and fifth generation (2003-2010) BMW 5 Series.
I’m not sure about the low, center red lens. Maybe a rear fog light? We saw other Vitaras with a black plastic plug there.
The Vitara seemed very competent for these rough roads, always getting traction in some pretty steep uphill sections fully loaded down with five adults. On hilly sections of highway though, the car downshifted often carrying the five of us. If I had to guess, I would say it has in the area of 125hp. It would be strained to keep up with traffic on I-95, or hilly I-81 through Virginia.
The gas mileage worked out to 27.7 mpg, very good for the type of steep hills and low speed use we encountered. The speed limit on the island is 40mph in most places. After five days of driving, it took 28 liters to fill up for about $80.00 East Carribean dollars, which is 7.4 gallons for about $27.00 USD.
For all it’s shortcomings, the Vitara would probably be a great fit for the American market right now, with new car prices and interest rates rising. It is a competent all wheel drive small SUV, that could surely undercut most others on price.
You can tell where a lot of the cost cutting was made, but it doesn’t detract from the fact that the Vitara simply gets the job done. The fact that we saw so many Suzukis here speaks highly of how well they hold together over the long run.
I owned two Suzys, some time ago. A red ’91 Swift GT was great fun, and later a green metallic ’01 XL7 4×4 Touring was a very solid early family car for me. Also a capable offroader after I had some beefier A/T rubber installed, which also lifted it slightly.
People bag on the brand but I loved both of them and would consider one today if they had any kind of presence in the USA anymore. I put the brand somewhat above Mitsubishi, then again I also loved my Diamante…..
I appreciate the detailed thoughts .
I spent a nice vacation in St. Lucia thirty years ago and loved it ~ so much to see and do .
-Nate
Our 2003 Chevy Tracker (Suzuki Vitara) now lives at our place in Port Orford and we use it locally instead of the van. Perfect for getting to the beach or trailhead, and exploring the rugged coastal mountains. It’s got some 230k miles on it.
Yes, there’s a real hole left in the US market when Suzuki pulled out; there’s just no real replacement.
Good review about an appealing vehicle in a beautiful place. I’ve owned two Suzuki’s, in fact I still have one, but both motorcycles. A note about the dash padding: I don’t THINK that any Federal laws require padding, just a certain amount of energy absorption which can be achieved with hard plastic, just like the crumple zones in the body/frame. I think it’s the car magazines that seem to demand “soft touch”. When I’m driving, I’m not usually fondling my dash so I don’t really care about that. Durable and easy to clean are my top criteria.
True about the dash padding. My xB’s dash is all hard plastic.
Correct about dash padding not being required. My ’98 Frontier has an all-hard plastic dash, which is perfectly functional and appropriate for a bare-bones pickup.
This is an enjoyable review, both for the car and the location. A quick check of Suzuki Caribbean’s website shows they bill the Vitara as being “the Caribbean’s number 1 SUV” – I assume that means it’s the best-selling SUV in that part of the world, which I guess isn’t too surprising. Seems like a reasonable car for the location, and I’m glad your vacation included renting a vehicle that’s not available at home.
One thing that does surprise me is the analog clock – I thought they’d all but disappeared from cars since digital clocks have got to be cheaper to produce.
Spent three years working in St Lucia in the early 70s, sounds like the roads have not improved much since then. At that time my main car was an Austin Mini that was transported to St Lucia with my family on a Geest banana boat. On my arrival our company driver asked for first refusal of the car and at the end of my tour the car duly became part of his hire car fleet. At that time the Australian version of the Mini Moke with larger wheels, was probably the most popular hire vehicle.
Don’t ask for that much, just the Jimny would make me happy
We saw a number of two door Jimny rentals too, looked like a fun vehicle.
It’s good to see that Suzukis are still abundant in Caribbean rental fleets. I used to rent these (and Mitsubishis) all of the time down there and I echo your comments about overall quality of materials … and also about the roads. I think you’re exactly right about how the cement is spread. I mean, they probably start off using some sort of machine to spread it out, but well, you know…it’s a hard job and there are only so many hours in the day and if YOU lived on a beautiful tropical island all year, how much time would you want to put into spreading cement smoothly on mountainous roads? 😉
As for the 2021 question, my experience with rental car fleets down there is that it’s not at all uncommon for vehicles to age multiple years as rentals. I suspect that the economics of shipping in new rental vehicles (and shipping out older ones) favor keeping cars in the fleet much longer than would be the case here on the US mainland.
Looks like a great trip!
Suzukis are often rated as competent but a bit generally also-ranish in tests, but the truth is, I’d always recommend one to most shoppers, as they really do make them with stellar long-term reliability. And the Swift is a damn nice little car anyway, plus I (irrationally) want a two-door Jimny, for the height, the size, and those looks. As does half of Australia it seems, because you just can’t get one inside a year!
This saintly Vitara has suffered a life in hell for the pleasure of tourists in paradise, and I have faith it will be doing so – if in increasing states of dishevelment – for a very long time yet.
Curious about how much this cost for the time you had it (rental car fees and their “add ons” in the US have become outrageous)? And was the rental agency at all persnickety about the vehicle’s damage leaving its rental site vs. its return?
Vitara is available in Europe and, yes, the rear middle red light is à fog light.