The Suzuki S-Cross 2024: A Surprisingly Accurate Trip Back to the Year 2000

When you think you reached bottom with the Qashqai, then be prepared and, buckle up, as there might be a new low in town. Here’s a tale from the not-so-distant past, experienced in the very present, aboard a machine that seems utterly bewildered by the concept of the 21st century.

Chapter 1: The Arrival – Or, Did Avis Accidentally Give Me a Time Machine?

There’s a certain, shall we say, minimalist charm often associated with Nordic sensibilities. We appreciate things that work, things that are straightforward, things that don’t fuss. Form follows function, and ideally, both are executed with quiet competence. So, when I found myself standing in front of a brand-spanking-new 2024 Suzuki S-Cross at the Avis counter in Hungary, keys jingling in my hand, I anticipated… well, competence. Maybe not thrilling, maybe not luxurious, but fundamentally competent.

The odometer read a mere 400 kilometres. It smelled new. It looked… like a car. A perfectly acceptable, modern-ish crossover shape. Nothing offensive, nothing particularly exciting. Just… a car. Ready for a week of exploring the Hungarian countryside, from Budapest’s bustle to the winding roads around Lake Balaton.

Then I got in.

And that’s when the temporal displacement began. It wasn’t a sudden jolt, more like a gentle easing back through the decades. Forget 2024. Forget even 2014. As I settled into the driver’s seat and took stock of my surroundings, I had the distinct and unsettling feeling that I had somehow been transported back to the turn of the millennium. This wasn’t just a car; it was a meticulously recreated artefact from the year 2000, accidentally released two decades too late.

Chapter 2: Inside the Plastic Time Capsule – Ergonomics Optional

The first clue was the sheer, unadulterated plastic. Acres of it. Hard, unyielding, slightly shiny plastic, the kind that dominated dashboards before ‘soft-touch materials’ became a marketing buzzword. It wasn’t necessarily bad, just… dated. Like finding a perfectly preserved Nokia 3310 in its original box. You admire the simplicity, the robustness, but you wouldn’t want to use it as your daily driver.

Then came the smaller details, the ergonomic quirks that spoke volumes. Take, for instance, the seat heating buttons. In a stroke of design genius seemingly plucked straight from an era before smartphones became ubiquitous appendages, Suzuki decided to place these crucial buttons directly in the landing zone for… well, for your phone. Right there, in the little cubbyhole beneath the climate controls, the perfect spot to toss your device while it’s plugged in or connecting wirelessly.

The result? Every second or third time I placed my phone down, my knuckles would inadvertently nudge one of the seat heater buttons. Suddenly, on a warm Hungarian afternoon, my nether regions would begin to slowly bake. It wasn’t an immediate five-alarm fire, more a gradual, confusing warmth spreading upwards. “Am I unwell?” I’d wonder. “Is it that hot outside?” No. It was just the seat heater, activated by casual phone placement.

And the buttons themselves! A masterpiece of ambiguity. Two settings: Low and High. Low is on the left, High is on the right. The ‘off’ position is in the middle so very hard to click it on without basically balancing your fingers on Low and High. It required conscious thought, visual confirmation, sometimes even two fingers delicately poised to ensure the desired outcome. Trying to do it by feel while driving? Good luck. You’re more likely to cycle between Low, High, and Mild Buttocks Toasting than actually turn the blasted thing off. It was, in a word, baffling. A solution to a problem that didn’t exist until they designed the solution. Peak 2000s thinking.

Chapter 3: The Suspension Saga – A Study in Contradictions

Driving in Hungary means encountering a variety of road surfaces. Smooth motorways give way to charmingly rustic country lanes, occasionally interspersed with potholes that look deep enough to hide small livestock. A modern car’s suspension is supposed to handle this with a degree of sophistication. It should be compliant enough to soak up minor imperfections, yet firm enough to prevent wallowing and provide stability.

The S-Cross’s suspension, however, seemed to have missed that memo. It achieved the remarkable feat of being simultaneously too soft and too harsh.

On relatively smooth roads, it exhibited a peculiar floatiness. Not a luxurious glide, more of a slightly uncontrolled wallow, like a small boat caught in a gentle swell. You felt disconnected, bobbing along slightly out of sync with the road surface. It wasn’t uncomfortable, exactly, just… vague.

But then, you hit a bump. A crack in the pavement, a manhole cover slightly askew, anything more challenging than a painted line. And WHAM! The impact bypassed any pretence of damping and travelled directly up the suspension struts, through the chassis, into the seat, and straight up your spinal column. It was jarring. Shocking, even. How could something that felt so marshmallowy moments before suddenly transmit impacts with such brutal fidelity?

It was like riding a jellyfish perched atop pogo sticks. Soft and wobbly until it encountered resistance, then jarringly rigid. They’d somehow engineered out the beneficial aspects of both soft and firm suspension, leaving only the drawbacks. I genuinely don’t know how they managed it. It’s a perverse kind of achievement. Something like a Non-Newtonian liquid.

Chapter 4: ‘Advanced’ Driver Aids – More Artificial Stupidity than Intelligence

Ah, technology. The great leap forward that separates modern cars from their forebears. Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), Lane Keeping Assist… features designed to make driving safer and less stressful. The 2024 S-Cross has these features. On paper. In reality? Oh dear.

Let’s talk about the Adaptive Cruise Control, combined with the lane-keeping function. You set your speed, set your following distance, and engage the system. For a while, it might even work, sort of. The car attempts to stay centred in the lane, adjusting speed based on the vehicle ahead, with just some strange steering-wheel vibrations.

But then, the Suzuki Nanny State kicks in. If you dare to relax and let the system do its job for too long – perhaps by not making tiny, unnecessary steering inputs – it decides you’re not paying attention. Fair enough, many systems do this, courtesy of European Union stupidity. They beep, they flash warnings, they might gently nudge the brakes.

The S-Cross, however, enters what I can only describe as ‘Panic Mode Lite’. It starts beeping insistently. Okay, fine. But it keeps driving. It doesn’t disengage the cruise control. It doesn’t gracefully hand back control. No, it continues steering, but now it does so erratically, bumping gently from one side of the lane marking to the other like a drunken pinball. The smoothness is gone, replaced by a jerky, hesitant motion.

And here’s the kicker: during this phase, you can’t easily get control back. Touching the steering wheel, which should normally disengage the steering assist, does nothing. The wheel fights you, vibrating and resisting your input while the car continues its slightly panicked, self-guided wobble down the motorway. Trying to cancel the cruise control via the buttons sometimes worked, sometimes didn’t. It felt genuinely unnerving, like the car was having a minor seizure and refusing to let go.

Eventually, after a period of beeping, shaking, and erratic driving, the alarm stops. Relief! But wait, there’s more! Now, you often find you cannot re-engage the adaptive cruise control at all. The system simply refuses. The icon stays greyed out, the buttons unresponsive. You’re locked out, like a naughty child denied dessert. You just have to wait. Drive manually for an indeterminate amount of time – a few minutes, maybe longer – and then, suddenly, without warning or explanation, it decides it’s ready to play again. The system becomes available, and you can try your luck once more.

It wasn’t just inconsistent; it felt borderline dangerous. An assistance system that actively resists driver input during its ‘warning’ phase and then randomly locks you out? That’s not assistance; that’s a liability. It was the technological equivalent of a moody teenager: intermittently helpful, prone to unpredictable tantrums, and fundamentally convinced it knows better than you. Utterly ridiculous. Sure, pressing the break canceled the ACC, anyway, quite an interesting implementation I might say.

Chapter 5: Unexpected Glimmers in the Gloom

Now, I believe in fairness. Even amidst the pervasive feeling of a Y2K bug on wheels, there were one or two surprising concessions to the actual year 2024.

Firstly, the infotainment system featured Wireless Android Auto. Yes, wireless! I could hop in, my phone would connect automatically, and Google Maps would appear on the central screen without fumbling for cables. This felt astonishingly modern compared to the rest of the car’s technological suite. Like finding a perfectly functioning espresso machine in a rustic log cabin. Unexpected, but genuinely welcome.

Secondly, there was a USB-A port for faster charging and connectivity. Again, a small detail, but one that acknowledged the existence of post-2010 technology.

These felt less like integrated features and more like components hastily bolted on at the last minute. “Right lads, marketing says we need wireless Android Auto and USB-X. Just… stick ‘em in somewhere.” They worked, mostly, and stood out like diamonds in a coal scuttle. Small comforts in a sea of perplexing choices.

Chapter 6: Digital Lag and Decibel Overload

While the wireless Android Auto was a welcome, modern touch, interacting with the system revealed the S-Cross’s true vintage. The central touchscreen responded to inputs with the kind of lag you’d expect from dial-up internet. Taps were met with geological response times, turning simple tasks like adjusting the map into frustrating guesswork, especially on the move. It felt less like interacting with technology and more like politely suggesting an action and hoping the car might eventually consider it.

Then there was the sound system, if one could generously call it that. The audio quality was simply dreadful. Despite fiddling hopefully with the equalizer settings, nothing could salvage the output. Bass was a muddy thud, treble a tinny hiss, and everything in between sounded like it was being broadcast from a bucket. Trying to improve it was like polishing mud – utterly futile. Music lacked life, and even spoken podcasts were a muffled chore to understand.

Compounding this sensory assault was the cabin noise. At anything above town speeds, the S-Cross seemed to amplify, rather than insulate, the sounds of travel. Wind noise howled around the pillars, and road and tyre noise droned up from below as if sound deadening was an optional extra Suzuki decided to skip. On the Hungarian motorways, the racket quickly became exhausting.

It reached the point where I genuinely had to pull over, dig out my noise-cancelling headphones – the ones usually reserved for surviving transatlantic flights – and put them on simply to continue driving with my sanity intact. Wearing aircraft-grade noise suppression inside a brand-new car felt utterly absurd, but it was the only way to make the journey bearable. A laggy screen, atrocious sound, and a deafening cabin: a truly special trifecta of interior shortcomings.

Chapter 7: The Hungarian Hustle – Racking Up the Kilometres

Despite its… quirks, the S-Cross was my chariot for a week of solid driving. We covered ground. From the initial 400km, the odometer spun rapidly upwards. We navigated Budapest traffic, cruised down the M7 towards Lake Balaton, explored the Tihany peninsula, wound through vineyards, and ventured onto less-travelled rural routes. By the time I reluctantly handed the keys back to a hopefully unsuspecting Avis employee, the car had clocked nearly 2000 kilometres.

This wasn’t just a quick jaunt around the block. This was a proper immersion. Every kilometre hammered home the car’s peculiar character. The bouncy-yet-jarring ride on country lanes, the perpetually warm seat on sunny afternoons, the game of ACC roulette on the motorways. The S-Cross wasn’t just driven; it was experienced. Thoroughly.

Chapter 8: Conclusion – A Competent Car, If You Pretend It’s 2004

The 2024 Suzuki S-Cross is, without a doubt, a car. It has four wheels, an engine, and it will transport you from A to B, assuming point B isn’t gated behind a requirement for functional adaptive cruise control.

But it is, fundamentally, a car that should have existed in the year 2000. Its basic nature isn’t charmingly simple; it’s just outdated. Its technology isn’t refreshingly minimal; it’s frustratingly inept. From the baffling ACC behaviour to the strategically inconvenient seat heater buttons and the schizophrenic suspension, it feels like a collection of missed opportunities and questionable decisions.

Driving it isn’t just driving; it’s an archaeological dig through the layers of early 21st-century automotive mediocrity. It’s a time machine, yes, but one that takes you back to an era we’ve thankfully moved on from, technologically speaking.

So, who is this car for? Perhaps someone deeply nostalgic for the dial-up era? Someone who finds modern car interfaces intimidating and prefers their technology to be actively, comically dysfunctional? Or maybe just someone who got a really good deal.

For everyone else, especially those expecting a car that reflects the progress made in the last quarter-century, the 2024 Suzuki S-Cross is less a new car and more a baffling, slightly irritating, mobile anachronism. It exists. It drives. But honestly, in 2024, you feel like you should expect… more. Or perhaps, less, but done significantly better.

Suzuki S-Cross 1.4l
Fuel: bezin
Power:  138 HP
Model: 2024