TOYOTA URBAN CRUISER

How good is the Suzuki eVitara in reality? Its Toyota twin has the answer

- ILLYA VERPRAET

It's not déjà vu – it's the new Toyota Urban Cruiser. If this smaller sibling of the bZ4X looks familiar, it's because we recently drove the Suzuki eVitara, which is essentially the same car.

Toyota and Suzuki are all in on the not-so-noble art of badge engineering. It's been a few years since Suzuki started selling the Corolla estate and RAV4 as the Swace and Across, so now it's Suzuki's turn to return the favour. Most of the development work for the Japanese firms' answer to the Kia EV3, Skoda Elroq and Renault Megane was done by Suzuki, with a bit of collaboration between the two on the base platform.

Mechanically, there are no differences at all, although the Urban Cruiser does get a slightly different face that has a bit of Toyota's 'Hammerhead' signature and the inside is always grey and black, rather than Suzuki's at least a bit more interesting brown dash.