What is it?
The Toyota Aygo – in retail form, and in the UK. It’s been all pre-production drives abroad before this, and while there’ll be a full road test examination in short order, this initial car – one of the few in the country – earns another first look.
Much about it we have learnt before. This is a marginally bigger follow-up to Toyota’s popular city dweller which has been on sale since before Twitter was born. It continues to share a platform with PSA Peugeot Citroën, although aside from the rear passenger door and the angle of the windscreen, not a single body panel is the same.
The Aygo is differentiated even more clearly by the x-graphic on the nose; as brazen a love-or-hate feature as it’s possible to imagine. The shape, of course, is largely incidental – the point is that you can swap out the inserts (quickly, via a dealer) for new ones, thereby personalising your car. Given that there are currently only three colours to choose from, your options are somewhat limited, but you get where Toyota is going.
Its thinking continues inside, where a more uniform architecture can be similarly customised with two levels of interior pack that swap out much of the glossy dashboard plastic (in as little as seven minutes, we’re told). If that weren’t enough, you can also have the distinctive double-bubble roof in a contrast coloured decal.
All of that’s on the option list; as standard in the UK, both the 3 and 5-door Aygo come in three grades: x, x-play and x-pression, with two special editions: x-cite and x-clusiv. As ever, the mid-spec trim will be the seller, but the DAB-equipped, alloy wheeled and x-touch media carrying x-pression looks tempting despite a sizable premium.
The x-clusiv driven here is only a few hundred pounds more than that and largely adds styling enhancements to justify its short price hop. There’s currently only one engine to choose from; the three-cylinder 1.0-litre VVT-i carried over from the previous Toyota Aygo, albeit in revised format. A five-speed manual gearbox is standard, with Toyota’s automated manual X-shift a £700 option.
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Okay
Ok, but I've seen the new Twingo and...
I don't mind the outside, but