New Toyota Urban Cruiser: more Suzuki than Toyota

Before the Renault Captur, Peugeot 2008 and even the Nissan Juke were at the dealers, you could already go to Toyota for a small crossover-like car in the Netherlands. In 2008, Toyota presented the Urban Cruiser to the European public, a compact crossover interspersed with Yaris technology, which had already appeared on the market a year earlier in its home country Japan as Toyota Ist and which was marketed in the United States by Toyota’s ‘youth brand’ Scion. if xD was marketed. The Urban Cruiser lasted in the Netherlands until 2014 and was not given a direct successor. The Urban Cruiser model name also disappeared elsewhere in the world, but not permanently. In fact, there is now a new one.

Toyota Urban Cruiser (2009-2014).

In 2020 it became clear that Toyota would pull the Urban Cruiser model name out of mothballs for a new compact crossover that appeared in 2021. That Urban Cruiser was actually not a Toyota at all. That car intended for the Indian market was an optically modified Vitara Brezza from Maruti Suzuki. That remodeled Suzuki didn’t last long. The Vitara Brezza was facelifted and is now called Brezza and the Toyota derivative disappeared. But something took its place. Suzuki conjured this Grand Vitara out of the hat in 2022 and Toyota got a derivative of that slightly larger SUV-like: the Urban Cruiser Hyryder. It now finds its way to South Africa and loses the Hyryder part of its model name along the way.

This Urban Cruiser based on the Vitara Brezza only existed for a short time.

The Toyota Urban Cruiser is yet another result of the increasingly close collaboration between Suzuki and Toyota. In addition, he illustrates for fans of automotive curiosities and extremely trivial facts how model names can differ from market to market. Why ‘Hyryder’ is not used in South Africa? This is possible due to the fact that the Urban Cruiser – unlike in India – is not available with a hybrid powertrain. That hybrid hardware comes from Toyota itself, while the rest of the Urban Cruiser Hyryder and Grand Vitara is all Suzuki. In South Africa, the Toyota Urban Cruiser always has a 105 hp and 138 Nm powerful turboless 1.5. A Suzuki heart, which can be linked to a manual five-speed gearbox and a four-speed automatic transmission.

Other examples of cars that go through life as both Suzuki and Toyota are the well-known Suzuki Across and Swace, successively a Toyota RAV4 and a Corolla Touring Sports. The Suzuki Baleno is available as Toyota Glanza and Starlet and the Toyota Belta as Suzuki Ciaz. More examples? Certainly. Do you know the Suzuki Landy? That is, in fact, a Toyota Noah. The new Suzuki Celerio is again sold by Toyota as Vitz.