In recent years, Toyota has rediscovered its spirit. It's clearly no better than the GR Yaris, a 10/10 hot hatch that can't get any better than the Yaris Hybrid, which is actually pretty good.
So where does that leave the Aygo, which was the small car of the city car world (until the VW Up came along...) and before that was the only funk car to be found in the entire Toyota lineup? Well, it continues to evolve, 15 years after it was first made and six years after a major update - and major refresh - in 2014.
It continues to be produced in the same Czech factory as the original, still alongside the Citroen C1 and Peugeot 108, which share its engine, chassis and, most importantly, design and production costs. When they came along in the mid-2000s they were a revolution, breathing new life into a corner of the market that had gotten the Up (and its siblings, the Mii and Citigo, who knows where that idea came from...) as well as the Fiat 500. All were already widespread plug-in offerings, rivalling fully electric rivals like the Honda e.
All of which makes the once-revolutionary Aygo look like an old car powered only by a 1.0-litre petrol engine. Now it's only available with five doors, and at over £12,000 you get a host of modern tech as standard, while the original Aygo started at under £7,000 with a hanging strap on one side of the luggage rack to accommodate as much cash as possible. So you now get air conditioning, smartphone integration, a reversing camera and basic active safety features including lane departure warning as standard. Although anyone who longs for the days of cheap cars with windscreens and black bumpers can rest assured that the base Aygo gets steel wheels with plastic caps, and all cars priced over £14,000 get alloy wheels.
There's no hybridisation on offer here - it's the only Toyota that isn't a sports car, Hilux or Land Cruiser that doesn't have the option - but the engine itself has received considerable attention since launch to keep it performing well. The latest update to the Aygo includes a 1.0-litre VVTi three-cylinder engine with a very small power increase - up 2bhp to 71bhp - and some mechanical changes: a new fuel injection system, a reshaped combustion chamber, a new exhaust gas recirculation system and a new balance shaft - all to improve efficiency. Toyota has also added additional sound-deadening panels to the rear of the dashboard, inside the doors and the windscreen pillars, also to make the Aygo more refined at speed.
Toyota also frequently adds special editions to the Aygo range, the latest of which is the grey and orange JBL Edition you see here. It costs twice as much as the regular Aygo and comes with a very good stereo system (by regular car standards...), among other options. The subwoofer is so big that the spare wheel had to be removed and replaced with a tire repair kit.
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