Vehicle suspensions provide opportunities for lightweight engineering by integrating energy storage and wheel guidance functionalities within individual or multiple components of the suspension. In our work, we investigated the use of compliant links in two suspension types with the objective of replacing coil springs and some rigid links thereby achieving reduction in part count and mass. The first suspension considered is a generic five-link suspension commonly found in production passenger vehicles. Using multi-body simulation tools integrated with finite element analysis of suitably dimensioned composite members, we searched for the best disposition of one or more compliant links within the five-link suspension without incurring too much deviation from the kinematic and vertical compliance characteristics of the original rigid five-link suspension. In a second case, we considered an existing rear suspension of a high performance vehicle that employs just three links: a trailing arm that also serves as the wheel carrier, an upper control arm and a lower control arm. Analysis led us to a design where the upper control arm of the original suspension is replaced with a ternary supported compliant link. Simulation results were compared with data obtained from actual tests conducted on the original suspension as well as on a mock-up of the re-designed suspension using an in-house designed test fixture. It was found that many of the elasto-kinematic characteristics of the original suspension can be reproduced quite well with the compliant link version. However, further optimization in link configuration, link material and geometric design is required to fully recover all aspects of performance.