The Toyota Aygo has a funky design and it’s easy to personalise it to your taste. It’s also fairly quiet on the move, but there are more spacious city cars, and safety kit is stingy.
6/10
Wowscore
This score is awarded by our team of expert reviewers after extensive testing of the car
What's good
Stand-out looks
Easy to drive in town
Frugal engine
What's not so good
Poor rear space by city car standards
Average boot
Stingy safety kit
Toyota Aygo: what would you like to read next?
Overall verdict
If you’re looking for a small, easy-to-drive city car used mainly for buzzing along urban roads then the Toyota Aygo is worth a test drive.
The Toyota Aygo’s dinky dimensions means threading your way through busy city streets is a doddle, and the good view you get in all directions means you can do it with confidence. Also on hand is light steering, so low-speed manoeuvres don’t require arms like Popeye. It’s very easy to park, then – especially if you go for an X-play model or above with their standard reversing camera.
OK, so the Toyota Aygo isn’t quite as comfortable as cars like the Hyundai i10, Kia Picanto, Skoda Citigo and Volkswagen Up and its engine makes more noise than these alternatives’ when you accelerate hard, but it’s frugal and has just enough power to keep up with motorway traffic.
However, on said motorway the Aygo’s engine settles down and by the standards of city cars there isn’t much road or wind noise to be heard either. Few will use their Aygo for frequent motorway trips, but it’s nice to know it won’t deafen you when you do.
Sadly, the Aygo’s slightly drab cabin can’t match its funky look-at-me exterior, but at least everything’s easy to use
But like most city cars, the Toyota Aygo is better suited to trips to the shops than long journeys, and, as such, comes with features designed to keep you safe around town, such as a hill-start assist on all models. It’s disappointing, though, that automatic emergency braking and lane departure alert are only standard on range-topping X-clusiv models. At least they’re optional on lesser trims.
If you often carry rear passengers in your city car, though, you might want to look elsewhere. The Toyota Aygo is cramped in the back, where a couple of adults will find both knee room and head room tight. No city car is truly spacious, but cars like the Hyundai i10 are noticeably roomier in the back.
Still, there’s enough to like about Toyota Aygo to warrant further investigation. Make sure you check out our deals pages for the best Toyota Aygo prices. And if you want more in-depth detail on every aspect of the Aygo, check out our interior, practicality and driving sections.
What's it like inside?
The Toyota Aygo’s 7.0-inch touchscreen infotainment system looks pretty smart and it’s fairly easy to use, but it doesn’t come with sat-nav or smartphone mirroring as standard
There’s plenty of space in the Toyota Aygo’s front seats for you to stretch out, but your passengers in the back will feel very cramped by comparison. The boot isn’t very generous, either
The Aygo’s rather cramped back seats are like the opposite of a roller coaster ride – only small people should be allowed on…
Boot (seats up)
168 litres
Boot (seats down)
-
The Toyota Aygo is only a small car, but there’s plenty of space in the front seats for tall adults to get comfortable. The seats themselves are reasonably supportive and you get driver’s seat-height adjustment as standard in all but entry-level X cars.
The reasonably large windows help stop the cabin from feeling too dark or claustrophobic – especially if you pay extra for the optional folding fabric roof in X-plore models – but space in the back is still pretty cramped. You only get two seats, and anyone over six-foot tall will really struggle for head and knee room. There’s space for two kids to spread out, however, but even they will find the firm seats pretty uncomfortable on long journeys.
If you do regularly carry passengers in the back, make sure you go for a five-door Toyota Aygo (only the entry-level X trim is available with three). It’s not as roomy as the likes of the VW or Skoda, but having back doors means you won’t have to get out to let your friends climb in. It’s far easier to fit a child seat using the standard Isofix anchor points in five-door models, too, and the Toyota’s reasonably tall roof (for a small car, at least) means you won’t have to lean down too far to strap in a child.
The Toyota Aygo doesn’t come with many handy cubby holes, but there’s still space to squirrel away a few small items in the glovebox and the front door bins are big enough to carry a one-litre bottle each. You get a pair of cupholders just in front of the gear lever, too, and a small tray beside them for storing your phone.
There aren’t any cupholders for passengers in the back, but they do get a space in each door pocket for a drinks can or a small bottle.
Even for a compact city car, the Toyota Aygo’s 168-litre boot is pretty small. There’s just enough space for two small suitcases, but a baby buggy will be a very tight squeeze and the tall boot lip makes it tricky to pack full of bulky luggage. If you regularly carry large suitcases, the Kia Picanto with its 255-litre boot will be much easier to live with.
It’s a similar story when you fold the Toyota Aygo’s back seats down – its 806-litre capacity falls significantly behind the 1,010-litre Picanto and 959-litre Up. Unlike the Kia, there’s a tall step in the boot floor behind the back seats which makes it a real pain to slide heavy boxes all the way forward.
At least there’s just about enough space for a small bike (once you remove one of its wheels, that is) and you can fold the back seats down in a 50:50 split if you need to carry some long luggage and a passenger in the back at once.
Sadly, you don’t get any shopping hooks to hold your groceries securely like in the Skoda Citigo, and you can’t adjust the Toyota Aygo’s boot floor height to reduce the size of the tall load lip.
What's it like to drive?
Only one engine available, but manual or automatic gearboxes
The Aygo may be short on power most of the time but it compensates with agile handling
You can only get the Toyota Aygo with one engine – a 1.0-litre three-cylinder petrol. It produces 72hp, so it’s perky enough to potter around town but it struggles to keep up with fast-moving motorway traffic. Accelerating from 0-62mph takes a very leisurely – and quite noisy – 14 seconds.
Stick to quiet country roads, however, and it’s reasonably quiet fairly cheap to run. Toyota claims it’ll return 68.9mpg, but you’ll have to drive with the patience of a saint to get anywhere near that rather optimistic figure. 55mpg far more likely, although that’s as good as any of its alternatives.
The standard five-speed manual is still pretty easy to use, however, and the Toyota’s light controls mean it isn’t particularly tiring to drive for long periods or in heavy traffic. There’s also the option of an x-shift automatic gearbox, which is fine if you absolutely must have an auto. Next to the autos in an i10 or Picanto, though, it feels quite jerky at low speeds.
Despite its small size, you get a good view out of the Toyota Aygo. This is thanks to the large windows and a relatively raised seating position. As a result, it’s dead easy to thread through tight city streets and you won’t have any trouble spotting cars approaching at junctions.
You can’t get it with any fancy automatic parking systems, but the Aygo’s light steering and small size mean you won’t have any trouble squeezing it into tight parking spaces. To help prevent any bumper scuffs, X-play models come with a reversing camera as standard and you can pay extra for rear parking sensors as part of the optional OUTshield pack.
Around town, the Toyota does a reasonable job of softening bumps in the road, but large potholes still send an unpleasant thud through the cabin. The new Toyota Aygo does come with added sound insulation to muffle the roar from the tyres at speed, but it’s still a little noisier than the VW Up. Head off the motorway and you’ll find the Toyota Aygo corners without leaning too much, but it’s not as fun to drive as Picanto, i10, Citigo or Up.
Pick a top-spec X-clusiv model, you get plenty of safety kit as standard, including lane-departure warning and automatic emergency braking to help prevent avoidable low-speed collisions. Unfortunately, you can’t get these features on entry-level cars and they’re optional extras on other models in the range.
