Ah, Suzuki. If you were to bring up the Japanese brand to the average American, they’d probably think you were talking about boat engines, motorcycles, ATVs, or scooters. But as recently as 13 years ago, Suzuki sold cars in America, too.
There are no signs that Suzuki will ever return to the U.S. market, despite my deep, strong, everlasting lust for a current-generation Jimny (only 17 more years until I can legally import one, I’m keeping track). But because The Autopian is a global brand, I like to monitor global automotive happenings. The latest, from Suzuki, involves pulling off a very General Motors move: An incredibly simple rebadging of a Toyota.
The company today revealed the newest generation of its Across crossover, and it’s very clearly just a Toyota RAV4 that’s had its Toyota badges replaced with Suzuki badges. Not that that’s a bad thing. In fact, it’s probably the smartest play an automaker can make right now.
Suzuki Is Doing Exactly What I’d Be Doing If I Wanted To Stay Relevant In This Market
The thing about Suzuki is that in the world of Japanese auto juggernauts, it’s a small fry. The company sold just over 308,000 vehicles globally last year. That’s nothing compared to Toyota, the biggest automaker on the planet. It sold twice Suzuki’s global production in the United States alone over that same time period.
As the saying goes, if you can’t beat them, join them. And that’s exactly what Suzuki’s done here. Since 2019, the company has been working with Toyota to sell the latter’s cars under its banner, starting with the RAV4. It has sold the highly popular crossover rebadged as the Suzuki Across overseas, with little more than a badge swap and nothing more, for the past six years.
In what feels like the most logical move, Suzuki has gone ahead and launched its own version of the new RAV4, which was shown off last year, to continue that partnership. In doing so, it looks as if the company has changed virtually nothing—pretty smart considering the RAV4 was the best-selling vehicle on the planet last year.
All of the body panels, save for a few of the grille pieces, look to be carbon copies of the RAV4. The wheels, the plasticky fender flares, the side skirts, the windows, the shape of the headlights, it’s all Toyota. If I saw one of these cars on the road without seeing the badge, there’d be no way to tell it was actually a Suzuki.
The powertrain is unchanged, too. Suzuki’s version is based on the RAV4 plug-in hybrid, which means a 2.5-liter naturally aspirated inline-four paired to two electric motors. The Suzuki is rated at a combined 300 horsepower, which is a bit fewer than the 324 horses of the Toyota version sold in the States.
This is very reminiscent of when Toyota teamed up with General Motors to rebadge its Sprinters and Corollas as Geo Prizms (and later Chevrolet Prizms) with little more than a badge swap differentiating the two variants. That team-up continued until 2009, when Pontiac finally went the way of the Dodo bird and took the Vibe hatchback — a lightly badge-engineered version of the Toyota Matrix — to the grave.
It Goes The Other Way, Too
This car-sharing deal Suzuki has with Toyota isn’t a one-way deal. Before the Across, the first product of this partnership was the Toyota Glanza, a lightly refaced version of the last-generation Suzuki Baleno hatchback built in India. Soon after came the Toyota Vitz and the Toyota Belta, African-market subcompacts based on the Suzuki Celerio hatchback and Ciaz sedan, respectively.
The coolest car to emerge from this partnership is undoubtedly the Toyota Urban Cruiser, otherwise known as the Suzuki e Vitara, launched in 2024. It’s a small EV meant for the Indian market. Unlike most of the cars mentioned above, these two have distinct looks, and I very much prefer the Toyota version:
Maybe one day, Suzuki will make a triumphant return to the United States. Seeing as how desperate Americans are to get their hands on new Toyotas, there’s definitely a business case here for Suzuki to bring the Across to America, even if it is virtually identical underneath. Badge engineering is making a return amongst the brand’s competitors after all.
Top graphic image: Toyota, Suzuki
I share your love of the JIMNY.
Its crazy how many different manufacturers Suzuki has done this with. Remember the rebadged Nissan Frontier? I think it was an Equator.
Um, akshually, the Vibe was a more-than-badge-engineered version of the Toyota Matrix: it had unique body panels (except roof and doors) and unique head/tail lights. But yeah, other than that just an airbag badge and an engine cover…
So there!
Yeah, I think once you’re changing more than the front & rear clips, “badge engineer” isn’t really the right term. 50+ years ago, Vibe/Matrix levels of brand engineering were the norm, but what GM & Ford did in the ’80s & ’90s forever established a definition that indicates sheet metal & DLOs are identical.
There’s no angle from which you could mistake a Matrix for a Vibe, and not just bc the latter started out with Pontiac ribbed cladding.
That’s a good point.
I’d say it’s kind of a half-step. Even cars with vastly different interiors aren’t what I’d consider to be badge-engineered, and overall, I think the term is used too widely by people who’ve read just enough about cars to sound like they’re informed (kind of like “narcissist” or “gaslighting” in the modern pop-psych world). People employ badge-engineered or rebadge to describe cars that share a platform and no body or structure panels besides perhaps a floorpan. A Cadillac XTS is not a badge-engineered Chevrolet Impala.
Interestingly, Toyota itself did something similar. Prior to 2016, the Land Cruiser and LX shared major and minor body panels, but beginning in 2016, the LX got a pretty comprehensive exterior redesign that meant this was no longer the case. Yet, still, you can tell that the body is the same.
It was a re-skin. I’m sure the structural components were identical, but superficial panels (including door skins, front quarters and rear quarters) were unique.
The door skins were unique between both generations of the Vibe and Matrix, too.
Kind of like Trump licensing his name to put on a bunch of buildings he doesn’t actually own.
Toyota should rebadge the Jimny as a Land Cruiser. FJimny? FJ41?
This is only news to the US, it seems. The current RAV4 is already reached as the Across here in Europe.
Have an acquaintance/friend I mentally nicknamed “Suzuki James” due to his Aerio daily driver. Both parts of that are now out-of-date but I do remember that little hatch.
Suzuki has been selling rebadged Toyotas for decades. There’a a lot more such models in Japan, such as the Suzuki Landy/Toyota Noah minivan.
Listen, between the Sidekick and Swift (two of the most rebadged vehicles of all time), Suzuki’s earned the right to rebadge all sorts of other vehicles.
The Swift was developed by GM as the M-car subcompact platform. GM decided it couldn’t profitably produce a car that small, so it traded the design to Suzuki for a 5% ownership stake, eventually owning 20%. GM sold off its shares in 2006-2008. In 2009, Post-Piech VW bought about 20% of Suzuki, which was clawed back after years of litigation in 2015. Now Toyota owns 5% of Suzuki.
That’s interesting. I always had thought the original Suzuki Swift, which GM sold as the Geo Metro was a Suzuki creation.
In particular the original Swift GTi was lauded as a fun very light (1800 lbs) practical 3 door w/5 spd manual.
Is this to fill the void of the Suzuki Swace (Corolla)?
Maybe it’s because my first 4 wheeled anything was a Suzuki 4 wheeler. Maybe it’s because the ultimate car on Gran Turismo was that Pikes Peak Escudo. Maybe it’s because my first road legal vehicle was a sidekick. Maybe it’s because I never got to try an X-90. Maybe it’s because they faded into obscurity and left the US market right as they produced a nice looking, fun to drive, manual transmission sedan.
But folks, I LUST for Suzukis.
I would buy a RAV4 just because I can swap the badging and steering wheel cover over and have a 2026 Suzuki ANYTHING.
I don’t, however, want them brought back over here. American tastes and buying habits are what drove Suzuki into selling a rebadged Equinox as an XL7.
We do not deserve Suzuki.
I too have a soft spot for Suzuki. The Kizashi was a cool sedan.
I have a feeling the Kizashi might be the worst selling “global” car in history. Sold in the US, EU, China and Japan, yet didn’t make a splash in any major market. Even more bizarre is its cult following, there’s still folks doing AWD and manual swaps for Kizashis in China, and a friend in Japan (who’s surname is also Suzuki lol) once warned me about seeing Kizashis on the road; apparently they’re only driven by cops as undercover cars.
XL7 wasn’t strictly a rebadged Equinox/Torrent. It was pretty similar C-pillars forward, but it had a longer rear end with a unique greenhouse treatment and a vestigial third row, and also its own interior.
That said, it was still a piece of crap by virtue of the fact that the Equinox and Torrent were.
Agreed. You are wise
This isn’t surprising — I was visiting Europe in late 2024 and a lot of taxi drivers were driving Corolla wagons with Suzuki badges and, seemingly, no other changes.
well, at least it’s not a shitty Daewoo LOL
And yeah, Suzuki needs to come back. The Swift is still an awesome car. Maybe GM can captive import it as the Chevy Metro again
The only thing I remember from the movie “Taxi” is Queen Latifah saying “Open the door. I don’t want to get Daewoo on my hands.” I haven’t seen one on the road in years, with the rebadged exception of a Chevy Spark that a neighbor had. Briefly.
The Spark is cool because it came in cool colors and was even available with a sunroof and heated seats at a fair price 🙂
I don’t think Suzuki has anything to offer the United States market, nor should it spend its meager resources to focus on us. Canada would be more receptive to the sorts of cars Suzuki sells, but isn’t a big enough market on its own to justify that kind of expenditure.
Besides–as is evidenced by the number of them I’ve seen for sale–plenty of people are comfortable bringing in Jimnys from Mexico and selling them for “off-road use” here in the ‘States.
I like this idea.
how tf is this compatible with Toyota telling dealers to get people into a Corolla Cross or a bZ because they don’t have enough RAV4s?
They build Rav4s in North America, Japan, and China. No way they’re going to import Chinese-built ones; I can’t speak to Japanese built ones, but the tariff situation is impossible to understand at any given moment. So I’m assuming the production is in that region.
Mmm, that checks out. I guess North American RAV4 production must be the bottleneck
Here in the UK the Toyota Corolla Wagon is sold as the Suzuki Swace
https://cars.suzuki.co.uk/new-cars/swace/
And as a hybrid, too. Nice!
I think that should be 3,308,000. Or something similar.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/suzuki-overtakes-nissan-japans-thirdlargest-automaker-2025-2026-01-29/
Yup. That sales figure definitely seems like an error. Suzuki says its December 2025 global production was just over 308K, which might explain where that number came from.
https://www.globalsuzuki.com/globalnews/2026/0129.html
The fact that Suzuki has long been one of the top selling car brands in Japan (second only to Toyota last year, but with fewer then half the units) led me to actively question that comparison.
https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h02659/
Which is definitely more than Toyota’s US sales last year.
https://pressroom.toyota.com/toyota-motor-north-america-reports-2025-u-s-sales-results/
If your readers have to QC & edit the writers, you’re doing it wrong.
I’d have DM’d the author if my Luddite brain could have figured out how. Still trying.
The only other thing I can think of is that the Indian market Maruti Suzuki is technically its own company, accounting for 2 Million+ sales. If there are a few other autonomous divisions (like Indonesia’s Suzuki division) that make up another Million then I can see how core Suzuki on its own would only have 308000 units sold.
So – Suzuki is now Japanese for “Mercury”?
“…the Toyota Glanza…”
What a great name – like the medical term for something below the belt.
“…Suzuki Celerio…”
You’ll need a half cup of that, chopped, for this recipe…
And wash down the Celerio with a Cappucino…
I have loved many Suzuki’s, so I am just happy to see the name again.
After GM rebadged the Suzuki Sidekick to make my Geo Tracker, and I re-rebadged it to make it a Suzuki again, maybe I should re-re-rebadge it into a Toyota, to go full-circle and cause maximum confusion
if I had a jeep, I’d put on Mahindra badges