Toyota Aygo/citroën C1/peugeot 107

Advice on buying the best.

Tiny dimensions usually mean tiny profits, so the successful launch of a new city car in 2005 meant maximising sales with some good old fashioned badge engineering.

Three years previously, work had commenced on a new factory at Kolín in the Czech Republic, with around £1 billion reputed to have been invested in the plant located around 40 miles from Prague, which would be home to a joint venture between Toyota and the French PSA group. The new model rolling off its production line would be variously badged as the Toyota Aygo, Citroën C1 and Peugeot 107, all of them effectively identical save for some exterior and interior design tweaks to differentiate the brands.

Trim & equipment

For a small car, the Aygo was decently equipped, especially if you headed up the range where all sorts of convenience features were thrown in. Things started with the standard Aygo trim which, for £6795 (five-door models were just £200 more), included a two-speaker CD player, anti-lock brakes and a rear wiper. Another £500 secured the Aygo+ which boasted two extra speakers for the stereo, along with niceties such as remote central locking, electric front windows, side airbags and a choice of snazzier paint colours. The top spot in the launch range was reserved for the £7745 Sport, which added a rev counter mounted in a separate pod, alloy wheels and front fog-lamps.

There were plenty of cost options available, including metallic paint for

It’s the first of these that we concentrate on here. The Aygo was priced a little higher than its Gallic siblings at launch, to attract those buyers that considered Toyota to be a touch classier. Badge snobbery aside, though, the real appeal lay in the cheap running costs.

Boasting modest service prices, impressive economy and insurance in the lowest 1E group the time, the Aygo seemed the perfect vehicle for urban motorists on a tight budget. In fact, the recipe was so successful that it would remain on sale for almost a decade.

£325 and manual air-conditioning for a reasonable £500, along with a Nav Pack with a portable Tomtom navigation unit. Buyers could also opt for the rather more unconventional Travel Pack, which included a Samsonite glovebox bag, a trolley bag and a rucksack.

What followed over the years were a slightly baffling raft of special editions, including the Platinum that arrived in December 2007 (it was deleted in January 2009 but reappeared in June that year as the top-of-the-range model) featuring Platinum Crystal Silver paint, six airbags and a six-speaker stereo. The Aygo Go arrived in January 2011 with a detachable Tomtom navigation unit, plus Bluetooth and USB connectivity and rear privacy glass, then the Fire and Ice models in February 2012.

Also worth seeking out are the models badged Blue or Black, which came with air-conditioning, alloys and part-leather trim among other goodies. Today, there’s little difference between them in used values, so there’s no reason not to go for an example with plenty of toys.

Last, it’s worth noting that ESP stability control wasn’t standard and Toyota actually dropped it as an option for a time, so it’s a bonus if the car you’re looking at is so equipped.

What goes wrong

Toyota’s aim with the Aygo was to keep running costs low. Service intervals were 12 months/10,000 miles and the petrol engines featured an air filter and spark plugs that only needed changing every 40,000 miles. The coolant lasted for 10 years or 100,000 miles, so the earliest cars should have had this refreshed, but check it’s been done.