Suzuki Swace review

Did you ever get told off at the dinner table for eating your favourite bits and leaving the rest? Of course you did. If ever there’s been an example of taking the sausage and chips but leaving the peas, it’s the Suzuki Swace family estate car.

You see, the Swace is the latest result of the collaboration between Suzuki and Toyota (following on from the Suzuki Across, which itself was almost identical to the Toyota RAV4), and is essentially a Toyota Corolla Touring Sports in disguise. While Toyota offers a full meal of Corolla hatchback, saloon and estate forms, Suzuki takes only the tasty estate and pushes the rest to the side of its plate.

The pickiness continues – while the Corolla provides several engine choices and a range of trim levels, the Swace is offered with only one engine and two trims. Still, that single engine is not to be scoffed at, being a hybrid that offers incredibly low CO2 emissions and the potential for similarly low running costs.

If you park the Swace next to its Toyota cousin, you’ll need to be a geneticist to tell the difference. The Swace has a very slightly altered front-end design (plus a different steering wheel inside). The stark similarities elsewhere demonstrate that the two cars really were separated at birth.

That means both cars face competition from the same rivals, including such family favourites as the Ford Focus Estate, Skoda Octavia Estate and Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer, as well as less established models such as the Hyundai i30 Tourer and Kia Ceed Sportswagon.

So, does the Suzuki Swace show its cousin how it’s done, or should you just stick with the Corolla? Or, in fact, are you better off with another of the great estate cars on the market? Read on through this review and we’ll tell you everything about it, including which are the best versions to buy. 

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