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 and Toyota RAV4), and is essentially a Toyota Corolla Touring Sports in disguise. While Toyota offers a Corolla hatchback and estate, Suzuki takes the estate version and pushes the rest of the model 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, because it's 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 family favourites such as the Ford Focus Estate, Skoda Octavia Estate and Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer. It's also in contention with the Hyundai i30 Tourer and Kia Ceed Sportswagon.

So, has Suzuki managed to make the Swace a better car choice than its cousin, 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? That’s what we’re going to tell you in this review, rating the Swace against its rivals in key areas such as performance, practicality and running costs.

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The Suzuki Swace’s 1.8-litre petrol hybrid engine produces 138bhp and can take you from 0-62mph in 9.4sec. That’s more than adequate for everyday use and faster than almost every version of the Skoda Octavia Estate. Indeed, you’ll never find that you struggle getting up to motorway speeds or overtaking. 

Elsewhere, there are no big mechanical changes to split the Swace from the Corolla, but at least that means your progress will be comfortable. Like the Corolla, the Swace strikes a great balance between suppleness and control; it’s firmer than the Octavia Estate but softer than the Ford Focus Estate. 

As a result, there’s enough compliance to take the worst out of big bumps and potholes, yet it never feels floaty over sudden crests. It also remains brilliantly composed over the sort of scarred and patched-up surfaces you find in most towns and cities.

The Swace is tuned rather more towards keeping you comfortable on the move than inspiring you through the way it drives, though. When driven in a leisurely fashion it handles well enough, with accurate steering that builds weight predictably. There’s a decent feeling of composure as well, as long as you don’t expect really quick changes of direction. If you push harder, you’ll notice that it’s less keen to tuck its nose into corners than the Focus Estate and Octavia Estate, and it runs out of front-end grip sooner than either. 

As for refinement, it has similar advantages and disadvantages to the Corolla. For a start, being a hybrid, it’s really hushed around town, because the electric motor can manage on its own in stop-start traffic over short distances. On electric power, progress is virtually silent and the petrol engine doesn’t disturb the peace too much when it cuts in to take over.

On faster roads, particularly those with inclines, the Swace’s petrol engine will soon whine away noticeably, as it does in the Corolla. The blame for that lies with its CVT automatic gearbox, which causes engine revs to soar abruptly during moderate to hard acceleration and remain high until you reach your chosen cruising speed.

You’ll have few issues getting comfy behind the wheel of the Suzuki Swace. The driver’s seat adjusts vertically and back and forth, and the steering wheel does the same. The range of steering wheel adjustment isn’t as extensive as in the Ford Focus Estate, though, and adjusting the angle of the seatback involves pulling a lever and shifting your weight back and forth until you find the right position. An adjustment wheel, as you’ll find in many rivals, would make it easier to be more precise. On the other hand, it’s great that the Swace provides adjustable lumbar support as standard.

You certainly won’t be complaining about your view out of the car, nor will you have much trouble manoeuvring into parking spaces. A reversing camera comes as standard, while Ultra trim gets front and rear parking sensors. What’s more, powerful LED headlights are fitted as standard across the range; in most rivals, you’ll either need to pay extra or upgrade to a posh trim level for comparable technology.

As for infotainment, the Swace has exactly the same system as you’ll find in the Toyota Corolla but on an 8.0in touchscreen instead of a 10.5in unit. Helpfully, it’s positioned high up on the dashboard, making it easy to see on the move. But, other than the physical volume knob, you don’t get any physical buttons to help you use the system when driving. You do get some virtual menu buttons up the side of the screen but we’d even prefer touch-sensitive buttons, like you get in the Skoda Octavia Estate, to those. 

The screen resolution isn’t particularly impressive but the software itself is pretty intuitive, making it easy to find exactly what you want without navigating through hundreds of menus,  and it responds promptly to your prods.  

Every Swace comes with Apple CarPlay/Android Auto smartphone mirroring, so you can use some of your phone's apps, such as Google Maps or Waze instead of the native software. That’s especially handy because built-in sat-nav isn’t offered in either of the Swace’s trim levels. Every model does come with DAB radio, Bluetooth and a USB socket, though, and the standard six-speaker stereo is clear and punchy.

The Swace’s interior is solidly made, with plenty of soft-touch materials that lend it a competitively plush feel. The dashboard materials, for example, feel pleasantly squidgy and dense, and even the insides of the doors don’t feel too cheap or scratchy. In fact, compared with the Focus Estate, the Swace feels positively upmarket inside.

Some of the details aren’t quite as classy as you'll find in its rivals, though. The leather on the gearlever, for example, feels a little plasticky compared with the fine-grain stuff you’ll find in a well-specced Octavia Estate. The steering wheel – the only thing that’s different inside compared with the Corolla – also has a plasticky artificial leather finish.

No one is likely to struggle for space in the Suzuki Swace. The front seats slide back a long way on their runners, and although some rivals have a tad more head room, you’re unlikely to feel hemmed in. The interior is wide enough across to keep some space between you and your passenger, too.

The door pockets are on the small side, but you’ll find plenty of storage space elsewhere, thanks to a generous glovebox and various trays and cubbies dotted about.

The Swace is surprisingly spacious in the rear, with fractionally more leg room than you’ll find in the Skoda Octavia Estate. Head room is slightly tighter, but six-footers should still be able to fit with relative ease. There’s also plenty of space for three children to sit side by side, and the central tunnel is much smaller than the one you’ll find in the Octavia. That makes things a whole lot more comfortable for a middle passenger, because there's more room for their feet. A central rear armrest with two cupholders is standard on all models, and the rear door pockets are a decent size.

As you’d expect in an estate car, the rear seats fold with a 60/40 split, and, just as unsurprisingly, the Swace provides precisely the same amount of boot space as its near-identical Toyota Corolla Touring Sports cousin. That means 596 litres of carrying capacity with the seats up – not at all bad, and we managed to fit seven carry-on sized suitcases underneath the parcel shelf, but it doesn't compare with the Octavia Estate’s whopping 640 litres and ability to take nine of the same suitcases. 

The Swace’s boot is a practical, square shape, and an adjustable boot floor allows you to make the most of the space on offer.

The most compelling reason by far to choose a Suzuki Swace is if you’re planning your next company car (the same is true of the Toyota Corolla). Thanks to its hybrid technology, low CO2 emissions are a key Swace virtue; the 1.8-litre engine emits as little as 102g/km, putting it in one of the lowest company car tax bands in this class.

Private buyers, too, will appreciate that it should be among the cheapest estate cars to fuel. When we put the Swace through our scientific True MPG tests, it averaged an impressive 86.6mpg around town. Its overall combined figure of 50.3mpg was less impressive (Suzuki’s official combined figure is just over 60mpg), but it is still comparable with the Skoda Octavia Estate 2.0 TDI 150’s combined result of 51.5mpg. 

As a private buy, the Swace is slightly cheaper than the entry-level Corolla Touring Sports, but both are more expensive than equivalent versions of the Skoda Octavia Estate. Like the Corolla, though, the Swace is predicted to have much better resale values than most of its rivals.

Our recommended trim is the entry-level Motion model, because it keeps costs down but still gets plenty of standard equipment, including dual-zone air conditioning, heated front seats, a heated steering wheel, keyless entry and start, LED headlights and the infotainment and parking aids that we’ve already mentioned. 

Upgrading to top-spec Ultra trim doesn’t add much to the price and only adds a couple of extras, including brighter LED headlights, some additional leather inside, wireless phone charging and the parking sensors that we’ve already talked about. You also get some additional safety equipment, but we’ll talk about that further down this page. 

Suzuki ranked an impressive joint fifth (with Hyundai) in the brand league table of the 2022 What Car? Reliability Survey, in which 32 manufacturers were scrutinised. That’s below Toyota, which finished 2nd, but above its rivals, including Skoda (13th) and Ford (27th). 

The Swace wasn’t included in the survey as a model, but the Corolla on which it is based finished in a middling position of the hybrid cars that were polled. For peace of mind, the Swace comes with a fairly typical three-year/60,000-mile warranty, whereas the Corolla Touring Sports comes with up to 10 years or 100,000 miles, providing you service with a Toyota dealer. 

As for safety, the Swace hasn't been tested individually, but you can use the Corolla Touring Sports' record as a guide. And it’s a good one: a maximum five-star Euro NCAP safety rating was handed to that car, and it was found to be better at protecting adult occupants than the Ford Focus in the event of a crash. The Skoda Octavia performed a little better at protecting younger occupants in a frontal impact, but the Corolla scored higher marks for side impact protection. In short, the Swace will prove to be a very safe vehicle.

The Swace comes with plenty of active safety aids to help you avoid a collision in the first place, including automatic emergency braking (AEB), lane-departure warning, traffic-sign recognition and automatic high beam assistance. If you go for range-topping Ultra trim, you’ll add blind-spot monitoring, safe exit assist and rear cross-traffic alert to the standard equipment list.

As for safety, the Swace hasn't been tested individually, but you can use the Corolla Touring Sports' record as a guide. And it’s a good one: a maximum five-star Euro NCAP safety rating was handed to that car, and it was found to be better at protecting adult occupants than the Ford Focus in the event of a crash. The Skoda Octavia performed a little better at protecting younger occupants in a frontal impact, but the Corolla scored higher marks for side impact protection. In short, the Swace will prove to be a very safe vehicle. If you go for range-topping SZ5, you get blind-spot monitoring as well as rear cross-traffic alert.

There are also plenty of active safety aids on hand to help you avoid a collision in the first place, including automatic emergency braking (AEB), lane-departure warning, traffic-sign recognition and automatic high beam assistance.

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