As Citroen, Peugeot and Toyota attempted to score points off each other in the early stages of marketing their own versions of the city car they had worked together to create, Citroen scored an early goal by announcing that it would sell the cheapest model. The entry-level C1 costs £6495, which is significantly less than you can pay for a new 1007 or Aygo.But Toyota isn't showing signs of being especially worried by this. The Japanese partner in the venture reckons that most customers will be prepared to spend over £7000, so the fate of the most basic Aygo is not of great concern. The range-topping Sport and the Aygo+ tested here are the more significant models.Standard equipment across the whole range includes ABS, EBD, front airbags, electric power steering, a radio/CD player and colour-coded bumpers. For the extra money you spend on the Aygo+, which costs £7495 as tested here or £250 less for the three-door alternative, you get remote central locking, side airbags and front electric windows (not rears - they don't wind down at all but pop out in a quaintly archaic manner regardless of how many doors there are and what name is on the badge).Metallic paint and air-conditioning are options at £325 and £500 respectively. For the revcounter, the five-spoke alloy wheels and the front foglights of the Sport you have to pay another £500.Nothing has happened in a week of living with the Aygo to contradict what I thought about the first example I drove (which was actually a Peugeot 107, but who's counting?). The level of engine noise, for example, came as a surprise every time I started the thing up.The little three-cylinder unit actually doesn't sound too bad, and I realise that it's difficult to keep the decibels down in a car which has so little stuff to absorb them, but I would still have thought that three major manufacturers working together could have devised some way of doing it. There will be a diesel option (Citroen is offering it now, Toyota will do so in 2006, Peugeot says it won't bother), but on this evidence I suspect the interior noise levels are going to be rather alarming.There's a similar story about ride quality. In both the forms in which I've driven it, this car becomes quite uncomfortable over the smallest bumps, even at very low speed. In fact, it's not quite so bad if you're squeezing every last drop from the one-litre engine on a really entertaining country road; somehow the ride seems to improve when the car is being pushed on, or at least you're not aware of it to the same extent. But how many people are going to drive an Aygo like that? Surely it would be more appropriate for a city car to be compromised in favour of urban driving.And that's the very thing that does not seem to have been done. Another example: rear visibility. After driving a three-door 107 I couldn't believe how large a blind spot there was - enough to blot out the view of a young mother and the pram she was pushing. In a five-door you might expect there to be more glass area, but in this case there isn't, and the difficulty remains. Perhaps Toyota - and Citroen and Peugeot - believe that a neatly styled window line will create extra sales, and the fact that owners won't notice the visibility problem until they've bought the car is nothing to worry about, but this isn't my idea of a clever design.There's one early opinion I would like to revise slightly. I said in my 107 report that the boot sill is ridiculously high, and I still think it is, but having spent some time putting things into the Aygo at one end of a trip and taking them out again at the other end I have to admit that this is less of a problem than I thought it would be. There is so little boot space that anything too heavy to be lifted that high probably won't fit inside anyway. And the fact that the tailgate consists of little more than the rear window means that it could easily be closed by a drunken kitten, which is good news for more delicate Aygo buyers. Engine 998 cc, 3 cylinders Power 67 bhp @6000 rpm Torque 68.6 ib/ft @3600 rpm Transmission 5 speed manual Fuel/CO2 61.4 mpg / 109 g/km Acceleration 0-62mph: 14.2sec Top speed 98 mph Price From £7198.00 approx Release date 01/07/2005
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