Suzuki Embraces Its Inner General Motors By Rebadging A Toyota

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