Toyota's New Manga-Inspired Aygo Is A Cracking Little City Car You'll Love

I’m always apprehensive when manufacturers say that their new car will target the youth market. More often than not you’re looking at the product of a middle-aged design team’s weekend spent Googling ‘the Facebooks’ or analysing Tinder for current trends.

The result is often the motoring equivalent of dad-dancing, but first impressions of the new Aygo are promising. It looks great and, because it shares its new platform with the new Citroen C1 and Peugeot 108, should be a decent steer too.

Before my test drive, I chatted to Chief Engineer David Terai, which is a little like hanging out with the cool Japanese uncle you never knew you wanted. The man tasked with giving the Aygo genuine youth appeal is always laughing, and speaks with pride about his Japanese heritage and uncompromising commitment to making this little car the best that it can be - lightweight hilarity seems to be his motivation behind every decision.

Fun styling was at the forefront of Toyota’s plan to target young urban consumers. That’s actually quite evident in its manga-like angular design. The ‘X’ in the front bumper is a bold feature, and works brilliantly in black - if you get bored it’s even replaceable, as are the rear bumper inserts and interior trim.

On the inside there’s a weird combination of materials. The dash gets cheap-feeling plastics, while the centre console is a piano black plastic piece. It looks cool at first, but it’ll quickly highlight greasy finger marks.

Inside the cabin, the ‘X-clusiv’ special edition has leather seats and a leather steering wheel, which both add a nice level of luxury to this small car. But even in this standard X-cite model there’s ample space and frankly ridiculous headroom inside; the double bubble roof means my lanky six foot frame never troubled the roof lining.

One of my favourite features is the X-touch multimedia system. It’s a touch-screen system which is fairly decent, but it gets a great MirrorLink system, which syncs up with your phone and mirrors whatever is on screen. Everyone has a smartphone these days, so you can use Google Maps rather than shell out £395 for the optional sat-nav.

Out on the road the Aygo is actually quite a fun little tearabout. The 69bhp 1.0-litre three-cylinder VVTi engine is the antithesis of rapid - 0-62mph dawdles by in 14.2 seconds and it’s got a top speed of 99mph - but what it lacks in pace it makes up for with fistfulls of charm. During casual driving, the engine is docile, but once you put your foot down it becomes a raucous little thing. Mr Terai explains to us that his team tweaked the intake sound to get the best noise possible. It’s not the most refined sound ever, and the noise is at odds with the speed you’re driving at, but low-gear thrashing will keep you giggling.

The most impressive aspect of the Aygo, however, is its ride. The front suspension is the same as that found on the outgoing model, but key components like the coil springs and shock absorbers have been tuned to give a flatter ride. They’ve worked wonders and the Aygo now rides like a much bigger car, soaking up bumps impressively.

It’s also fun to chuck about, with the electronic power steering now 14 per cent more direct, which results in hilariously cute understeer and tyre squeal.

There are both automatic and manual options available, and while it might be heinous to say this on these pages, I’d go for the auto. The manual’s a bit vague to stir about, and doesn’t exactly scream driver involvement. The X-shift auto ‘box isn’t perfect either, however. In first and second the gear ratios have been lowered for perkier acceleration, while third to fifth have been made longer for economy. It holds onto the first couple for absolutely ages, making the claimed 67.3mpg combined figure (68.9 in the manual) and 97g/km CO2 (95 in the manual) all the more impressive.

The reason we’d go for the auto is for the paddle shifters. Under hard acceleration you really notice the slow, deliberate upshifts, but when you give the car some stick, it’s great fun flicking down the ‘box and hearing the baby blipshifts as the engine buzzes at high revs. For an 18-year-old kid with a vivid imagination it’s a hilariously inexpensive way to feel like a rally driver.

There are a couple of little niggles. Firstly, we’d prefer even better economy on the auto with earlier upshifts in first and second - leave the high-revving for paddle-wielding moments. Also considering it’s a city car, in which visibility is quite important, the rear three-quarter view is appalling. The rising window line looks cool from the outside, but provides a large blind spot, as well as cutting out a lot of light for rear passengers.

Prices start from £8595 for the X model, but if you’ve got the cash, we’d recommend stumping up £10,895 for the X-play with the auto ‘box - you get some decent kit without breaking the bank and get to play with paddle shifters, after all. As far as first cars go, there might be more recommendable options still - prices for the brilliant Fiesta start from £10k - but the Aygo has an undeniably quirky charm that makes it the left-field city car of choice.