Toyota Urban Cruiser will be a rebadged version of the Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza, with slight changes to the exterior styling
Toyota is currently working on a sub-4-metre for the Indian market, with expected launch window around the Diwali festive season. Christened the ‘Urban Cross’, the vehicle will be a rebadged version of the Maruti Brezza, just like the Glanza is a rebadged Baleno. That said, reports suggest that Toyota might restyle the SUV a little, in order to help differentiate the two products apart.
There has been a lot of speculation about Toyota’s upcoming subcompact SUV, especially about the way the vehicle will look. Here, we have a digital rendering, created by Shoeb R. Kalania of IndianAutosBlog fame, which seeks inspiration from the recently unveiled Toyota Corolla Cross. The chief design changes are concentrated on the front-end of the car.
The front grille in this digitally rendered Toyota Urban Cruiser is the same as the one on the Corolla Cross. It juts forward from the rest of the car’s face and has a fish-scale pattern for the mesh. The front bumper gets black plastic cladding on it, as do the wheel arches. The door cladding is also slightly different when compared to the Brezza, and headlamps are similar to the one on the Maruti SUV but with sharper edges.
The rest of the design remains the same as its donor car. The production model will surely look different from this rendering, but we wish Toyota would think along these lines. With the Glanza, Toyota simply rebadged the vehicle and sold it as a new product. There wasn’t any significant difference between the two vehicles, which is why a majority of the customers failed to see any reason to choose Toyota over Maruti.
With the Urban Cruiser, Toyota will have to rethink the rebadging strategy. If a Toyota product holds no aspirational value over an equivalent Maruti, customers will have no reason to choose one over the other. In such a case, most will be willing to play it safe and choose Maruti.
While there has been no confirmation about the engines on offer on the Toyota Urban Cruiser, we can safely assume that it will have the same 1.5-litre petrol engine as the Brezza. This motor can generate a maximum power of 105 PS and a peak torque of 138 Nm. There will be two transmission choices available here – a 5-speed manual and a 4-speed torque-convertor automatic.