Jimny off-limits for Toyota

Toyota and Suzuki’s vehicle-sharing agreement will not extend to the Suzuki Jimny compact off-roader.

That’s the word from India, where the new five-door Suzuki Jimny XL is built.

Toyota has pumped out countless compact off-road SUV concepts over the last few years spooling the rumour mill into overdrive as the brand looks increasingly likely to deploy a baby LandCruiser.

Toyota and Suzuki have cross-pollinated several models, for instance the RAV4 is sold as Suzuki Across in the sub-continent while the Suzuki Baleno wears Toyota Glanza badges there.

Graphic artist K Design has fashioned two different versions of how a Suzuki Jimny-based compact Toyota LandCruiser could look, featuring the LC 70 Series and LC 250 Series or Prado front ends as references.

Toyota was bullish about leveraging the Suzuki Jimny platform to develop its own micro LandCruiser according to Autocar India but Suzuki has seemingly blocked the world’s biggest car-maker from appropriating its iconic vehicles.

“Toyota wanted to badge engineer the Jimny and Swift, but we politely declined,” a Suzuki source told Autocar.

A Suzuki Maruti spokesperson reportedly verified the Jimny was off-limits to Toyota.

“It’s like asking Toyota to let us badge engineer the LandCruiser. Models that are at the heart of our brand are not meant for sharing and both companies respect that,” they told the Indian website.

While a growing body of evidence points towards a mud-plugging baby Toyota LandCruiser, it’s looking likely the world’s biggest car-maker will need to leverage one of its existing platforms to create a Jimny rival.

It's not clear if Toyota's new junior LandCruiser will get a ladder frame like many purpose-built 4x4s or whether it will piggyback off a car-based (and less off-road capable) monocoque chassis, used by models like the Corolla Cross small SUV.

Over the past several years Toyota has been switching its mainstream global vehicles to the scalable TNGA platform architecture, which underpins everything from the Toyota Corolla to the upcoming 2024 Prado.

Powertrain options are also unknown at this stage and while combustion power would keep it price-competitive with Jimny, preview vehicles like the Toyota Compact Cruiser EV concept suggest an electric powertrain is being considered.