MODEL TESTED: Toyota Aygo 1.0 VVT-i x-trend (Safety Sense)

PRICE: £13,215 ENGINE: 1.0-litre 3cyl, 71bhp

THE Aygo was refreshed back in 2018 with a revised look and improved tech, but two years on, can it keep pace with the latest car to join the class? We’re testing the Aygo 1.0 in x-trend trim with Toyota’s Safety Sense pack, which costs £13, 215, making it the cheapest car here, but not by much.

Design & engineering

SINCE the city car trio of the Skoda

Citigo, SEAT Mii and Volkswagen up! went off sale (they’ll all be back soon in Auto Express as fully electric variants or with revised ranges) it’s given models like the i10, Picanto and, in particular, the Aygo a stronger look in.

The Aygo was designed as part of a city car trio, too, with Peugeot, Citroen and Toyota all pooling their cash to develop their subtly different takes on urban mobility at the time, albeit with the 108, C1 and Aygo all sharing the same underpinnings.

As a result, the Aygo’s suspension set-up is similar to its test rivals’, while it also uses a non-turbo 1.0-litre three-cylinder petrol engine. This makes 71bhp and splits the other two for power, but offers the least torque. There’s a five-speed manual transmission with front-wheel drive. It’s a fairly conventional recipe for this class, but times are changing and more fully electric city cars are on the way.

This second-generation Aygo was originally launched in 2014, which means when you step inside you can tell the design is six years old and it’s showing its age. The seven-inch touchscreen is mounted in the centre console, which is a solid piece of cheap-looking silver plastic that also houses the heating and ventilation controls.

While the design is more interesting than the i10’s interior, the rest of the cabin materials look cheap and older. But that’s almost to be expected given the Aygo is nearing the end of its lifecycle, and the i10 is just starting its latest one. The Kia is caught in the middle.

At least there’s a good level of equipment that pretty much matches the i10 and Picanto. The Aygo’s touchscreen features CarPlay and Android Auto – it was one of the first Toyotas to get this technology

– plus climate control, DAB radio and a reversing camera. Our car also featured Toyota’s Safety Sense pack for extra safety tech, which brings the price almost to parity with its rivals – or so close that it’s

confinesȿ4L4L not really an issue between any of them. Driving THE Aygo handles sweetly. It’s light, so it feels nimble in the tight of town centres, like a city car should. However, the trade-off for this agility is that the ride feels loosely controlled, a little too bouncy and not as refined as either the i10’s or the Picanto’s.

The gearbox is okay, while the engine is fairly revvy. Given it split its two rivals for performance, it’s no surprise that the Aygo divided them when it came to the 0-60mph sprint, taking 13. 2 seconds.

However, its in-gear performance was much less impressive. The five-speed unit’s ratios are long, so you often have to drop down one or even two gears to extract the Aygo’s performance. It has the least torque and this showed particularly in our 50-70mph acceleration test in fifth, where the Toyota took a yawning 30.3 seconds, which was so far off its rivals’ times. The Kia took 17.1 seconds and the i10 needed 20.7 seconds to complete the task.

As we’ve said, as long as a city car meets a minimum threshold of performance it’s okay; the Aygo just about does this, because in town in the lower gears it feels peppier than on the motorway, where it struggles. That’s also true of its ride, where it feels less controlled, which impacts higher-speed cruising refinement. Given that the other two cars are refined and practical enough to occasionally take on the role of a supermini, this is quite important.

Practicality

NOT only does the Aygo lose out on ride quality, but with its 168-litre boot and smaller rear doors making access to the rear of the more-cramped interior harder, it’s not the most versatile machine here, or in the class.

Rear space is fine for short trips, but longer journeys will test passengers’ resolve more than in either the i10 or Picanto.

The rear window line is also a slight issue because although it looks great, it means over-the-shoulder visibility isn’t as good as in its rivals.

Ownership

WE’D order the Aygo with Toyota’s

Safety Sense pack, because it adds autonomous braking as well as lanedeparture warning to earn the car a four-star Euro NCAP safety rating, matching the Kia’s result.

Its warranty also basically matches its rivals’, with Toyota offering five-year/100,000-mile coverage. However, roadside assistance costs £7 per month; both rivals come with a year’s cover.

Running costs

SERVICING over three years will cost

£550 on the Aygo, compared with £505 on the i10 and £389 for Kia’s three-year maintenance pack.

Other costs to factor in are insurance – £340 for the Picanto, £345 for the Aygo and £353 for the i10 – and company car tax, although many people probably won’t run these as business vehicles.

But if you will, then the Aygo will be the cheapest to run thanks to its 93g/km CO2 emissions that put it in the 22 per cent Benefit-in-Kind bracket. The Toyota will cost lower-rate taxpayers £573 a year in contributions, compared with £638 for the 104g/km i10, which sits in the 24 per cent BiK category, and £708 for the 115g/km Picanto, which is rated in the 27 per cent class for company car users.