Suzuki Swace 2021 - FULL REVIEW

Suzuki is literally on a charge. Not only has it electrified its entire range, but it's also expanded it, albeit with more than a little help from its technical collaborator Toyota. In this, the second model of that partnership, the curiously named Suez, borrows the design of the familiar, respected Toyota Corolla Sports Tourer estate to give the Suzuki brand an entrant into the important C-segment compact estate sector. Is it convincing enough, however, to win Suzuki some new friends? When is a Suzuki not quite a Suzuki? For mainstream visitors to the brand, is when it's a Suez, this car, the company's version of the Toyota Corolla Sports Tourer estate. With most shared product designs, the manufacturers involved take quite a lot of trouble to change the bits you can see to further the pretense that the products concerned are actually different. This isn't one of those designs. Suzuki needed a quick fix to reduce its average CO2 output in Europe and avoid punitive fines from Brussels, so they turned to Toyota, with whom the brand has a longstanding history of business partnerships. And this is the result. With the Suez, virtually no attempt at differentiation from the donor car has been made, apart from a subtly different nose design and different badges on the wheels and inside on the steering wheel. At least you know what you're getting. And what you're getting is the estate version of a car we've previously recommended, the Toyota Corolla, one of the very few family hatchbacks available with a self-charging full hybrid engine. The Suez brings Suzuki back into a market sector it's been absent from since it offered the Baleno estate at the turn of the century, but that car never sold very strongly. Perhaps now, with the added draw of electrified technology, it'll be a different story for the company in this segment. Let's check this car out. The Suez combines a 1.8 litre, 102 brake horsepower engine with a 53 kilowatt electric motor and delivers drive through a CVT gearbox. Whilst not scintillating, performance is acceptable with a rest of 62 mile an hour time at 11.1 seconds, while the top speed is pegged at 111 miles an hour. Combined, the engine and electric motor offer a relatively seamless driving experience where three driving modes can be selected, normal, eco or sport. The driver can also select a fully electric EV mode for those times when completely silent or emissions free running is preferred, such as for inner city work or even early morning starts. In this mode, the car has the potential to cover a mile or so on pure battery power. EV mode can be used for driving short distances without having to worry about noise or emissions, especially in congested areas early in the morning and late at night or in garages and indoor parking lots. Combining both engine and electricity, however, can still reap the environmental rewards depending on what you select. Normal mode will give the driver the optimal balance between fuel economy and performance, whereas eco will enhance the fuel economy through throttle response and even go as far as limiting the air conditioning. Sport will provide a quicker throttle response to emphasize acceleration when needed. Much like the Across SUV, the Suez almost exactly mirrors its Toyota cousin in design, save for a unique front face with LED headlamps and a prominent Suzuki badge. Even the hybrid badges on the front wings are Toyota stock items. Unlike its Corolla cousin, the Suez is only available as an estate. Like that donor model, it's quite a sharp looking car and a far cry from Suzuki's turn of the century Baleno estate, the brand's last offering in this class. A strong dynamic crease blends out from the front wheel arch towards the rear, breaking the side profile embellished by standard 16-inch alloy wheels, which get Suzuki branding. The rear is also cleanly styled, if perhaps not quite as distinctive. The all LED rear lamp clusters have light guides located as far out towards the vehicle's edge as possible to emphasize its wide stance. Further up, you get this neat roof spoiler with a shark fin style aerial just beyond. Moving inside, the Suez once again offers few differences over its Corolla cousin, though you get Suzuki branding on both the instrument screen and the centre screen at start up. Helping with the overall feeling of sophistication is the view you get through the three spoke leather stitched wheel, that of a smart instrument binnacle presented with a combination of digital and analogue design. Anything it can't tell you will probably be covered off by this eight inch centre dash display that deals with the usual DAB audio, Bluetooth and online connectivity options. Though it isn't cutting edge in terms of graphical sophistication, we appreciate the fact that it incorporates a standard rear view camera and Apple CarPlay and Android Auto smartphone mirroring. And we like the neat energy monitor which shows you at any given time what's being charged or powered by what. Soft touch plastics with chrome and silver accents throughout help lift the ambience of a slightly dark interior which gets rear privacy glass and piano black instruments surrounding trim. The rear bench is a little tight by class standards, both in terms of leg and headroom restrictions rather emphasized by the way the curved roof lining slopes down ahead and to the side of you. The footwells are also pretty tight and cramming three adult folk back here is going to be something of a squash. Still the low centre transmission tunnel will help. There are no connectivity ports back here and you only get a seat back pocket on the passenger side which seems a bit mean, but you get a centre armrest with cup holders, individual overhead reading lights and coat hooks in the grab handles. Out back there's a class competitive 596 litre boot and further space beneath the floor though only because Suzuki declines to offer any sort of spare wheel. These removable slats at each corner are useful allowing you to take long items, a bag of golf clubs say, width wise and there's a 12 volt socket on the right plus the usual tie down points. The luggage compartment can be easily expanded into a fully flat space by using these sidewall catches to fold down the second row seats which creates a total loading space of up to 1,606 litres. From launch the entry point to Swace ownership started at around £27,500. That's for base SZ-T trim plus a SZ-5 spec costs around £1,800 more. These figures might look a little high at first but when you take into account the sophisticated full hybrid tech and look at the high level of equipment fitted they might seem a little bit more palatable. Also the fact that this is an estate model brings an element of practicality into the mix too. You might find your local franchise very happy to sharpen the price as well. The Swace was being discounted by Suzuki dealers by up to £3,000 at the time of this test in summer 2021. Rivals to this car are a mixed bag with many not offering this car's full hybrid efficiency. Of course the biggest competitor to consider will be the Toyota Corolla Touring Sports estate model this Swace is based upon. One of those costs around the same as a Swace in the plusher levels of trim needed to match this Suzuki's SZ-T and SZ-5 trim levels. Potential customers might also be looking at estate versions of the Ford Focus, the Volkswagen Golf, the Seat Leon or the Skoda Octavia with mild hybrid engines. For a little more you could get a Kia Ceed sports wagon PHEV with plug-in hybrid tech and a lot more battery only driving range. Standard Swace equipment includes heat for the front seats and steering wheel, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto smartphone mirroring, plus automatic headlamps and wipers as well as dual zone climate control. The SZ-5 adds a wireless charging pad for your mobile, bi-beam headlights, blind spot monitoring, rear crossing traffic alert and simple intelligent parking assist to the impressive tally. The hybrid system fitted to the Swace gives reasonably impressive fuel economy and running costs without the need for plugging in. The combined fuel economy figure is up to 64.2 miles to the gallon on the combined cycle according to WLTP figures with emissions of just 99 grams per kilometre. That's assuming you activate the provided Eco Drive mode which helps the driver accelerate in an eco-friendly manner and enhances fuel economy through more gradual throttle response and minimal air conditioning use. This mode is useful during stop-and-go city driving, much of which can be conducted all electrically as the hybrid system regenerates energy into its tiny battery. Clever touches also help, like the S-Flow control in the air conditioning which allows the climate system to detect the number of occupants and take into account the ambient temperature, then altering its output accordingly, thereby saving energy where possible. To help monitor the frugality of your driving, the info section of the centre screen offers various sections. There's an energy monitor so that you can see at any time what's being powered by what. There's also a history section which graphically shows the success or otherwise of your recent efforts at frugality. And a trip info screen graphically shows how much energy has been regenerated by the hybrid system over recent journeys. Plus the same screen shows you current fuel economy, average speed, your elapsed journey time and your cruising range. The instrument screen has a selectable eco section which gives you a useful charge, eco, EV and power graphic, plus it grades your driving in terms of starting, cruising and stopping. You can also select a screen showing your EV driving ratio, that's the amount of time the car has functioned all electrically, and another showing your average miles per gallon. The trip section also shows a simpler version of the energy monitor. All of this is the same as you'd get in a Corolla, but one area where Suzuki does drastically differ from the Toyota equivalent is with its warranty, only offering a three year 60,000 mile warranty as opposed to the five year 100,000 mile package that you get with a Corolla. It might seem odd that Suzuki previously such an innovative manufacturer would merely rebadge a Toyota to widen its electrified model offering. This technology though demands years of experience and huge investment. Should Suzuki have made its customers wait for full hybrid tech, then charge them richly for it? Or should it as here use proven tech from an established partner, allowing them to bring this engineering quickly to market at a relatively affordable price? You can see why the second approach makes more sense and this Swiss model fully embraces it. For the money that you'd spend to get mild hybrid tech that makes hardly any difference to running costs on comparable estate versions of the Golf, the Focus, the Leon and the Octavia, here you get a full hybrid power train that can in contrast run at times exclusively on full electric power, so offering significantly lower running costs. If that makes sense to you, this car might too.