Suzuki Swace 2021 UK review

Badge-engineered hybrid wagon holds plenty of pragmatic appeal I'm not trying to be cryptic here, but when is a Suzuki not a Suzuki?Answer: when it’s a Toyota. The new Suzuki Swace feels familiar because behind the badges sits the Corolla Touring Sports.Bodywork, 120bhp hybrid powertrain, shiny new TNGA platform, surprisingly elegant interior fixings; everything. All is supplied by the world’s second-largest car company (rather than its 20th) – the result of an industrial partnership formed between the two makes in 2019 and whose initial badge-engineered progeny was the RAV4-based Suzuki Across. You might well wonder why these cross-brand models exist in the first place. In this case, Suzuki benefits crucially from reducing its average CO2 output in Europe – even this top-spec SZ5 Swace ducks beneath 99g/km – while Toyota grows its sphere of influence.We’ll witness a similar arrangement in 2023, when the Mazda 2 is replaced with a rebadged (but, unlike the Swace, also lightly restyled) Toyota Yaris Hybrid.  Toyota, of course, also has its long-standing partnership with Subaru, and we should expect this kind of collaboration to become more common industry-wide as emissions targets and rising development costs erode profit margins.