SA Roadtests
South Africa
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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. I drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under real-world South African conditions. Most, but not all, the vehicles driven are world cars as well, so what you read here possibly applies to the models you get where you live.
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Pics by Motorpress
Posted: 20 October 2018
The numbers
Prices: Aygo – R168 500; X-Play – R170 800; X-Cite – R195 000
Engine: 998 cc, DOHC 12-valve, three-cylinder
Power: 53 kW at 6000 rpm
Torque: 93 Nm at 4400 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 13.8 seconds
Maximum speed: 160 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: About 5.1 l/100 km
Tank: 35 litres
Luggage: 168 – 806 litres
Warranty: 3 years/100 000 km
Optional 3 year/45 000 km service plan available
Most families have some - distant cousins, stepchildren or, in the motoring world, offspring born of joint ventures.
Toyota’s Aygo city car is built by one of these, a company called Toyota Peugeot Citroën Automobile Czech (TPCA). Located at Kolin (population 31 000), a town in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic, it employs 3200 local people. They build essentially just one product and it’s labelled Toyota Aygo, Peugeot 108 or Citroën C1. Minor details vary.
South Africans buy roughly 97 of them each month, with Darryl Jacobson’s True Price organisation judging it the entry-level car that best holds its resale value: “Achieving 75 percent of original list price at auction, it’s the clear leader in resale values,” he commented recently.
The local range consists of four choices: Aygo, the base car that can be had in three monochrome colours; Aygo X-Play Black - same specification but solely in two-tone with black roof and Cherry Red body; Aygo X-Play Silver that’s similar but silver over black and upscale Aygo X-Cite that comes standard in Ice White although six other colours are available optionally.
X-Cite adds a powered black Funroof - a rollback canvas section – and a small specification upgrade. This consists of side curtain airbags that bring the total up to six and 15-inch alloy wheels to replace 14” steel rims with plastic caps. A trade-off is that the standard spacesaver spare makes way for a pump kit.
There is one engine and one gearbox. Toyota’s 1KR-FE, 998 cc three-cylinder that develops 53 kW and 93 Nm since a 2015 upgrade to comply with Euro6 emissions standards, is paired only with a five-speed manual transmission. Overseas buyers can choose a 1200 cc Peugeot motor should they prefer a bit more power.
Our test car was an X-Play Silver unit and, if we were buying one for ourselves, we would fit a set of aftermarket, 14” alloy wheels. This would overcome the hassles of lost, stolen or scratched caps, look smarter and maintain the reassurance offered by a spare wheel.
Apart from the airbags mentioned earlier, reassurance also includes ABS brakes with Brake Assist, vehicle stability control, hill start assistance, ISOFix anchors with top tethers, childproof locks, rear fog lamps and central locking.
While researching this car we noticed that, although it’s priced very close to Toyota’s own Etios, that India-built car outsells this one by a factor of about 11. Superior rear legroom and a bigger boot explain a lot, but this one has charm of its own.
We noted Aygo’s added safety features (at least two more airbags, hill start and VSC) and its internal simplicity and decided that it would make a brilliant student car. New drivers like its manoeuvrability (9.6-metre turning circle and light steering), easy to reach gearshift lever, 7” touchscreen music system that pairs and shares easily and simple instrument layout.
All that you need is contained in a single, circular dial that moves up and down with the steering column. The rev. counter, that beginners usually ignore, occupies a minor arc next to the big and bold speedometer that in turn features outside temperature, mileage and fuel gauge within a secondary “button” in its centre. There’s no need to look elsewhere for further information although the fuel computer can be called up by pressing one of the trip meter buttons.
Fuel, you said? When it comes to sipping the expensive stuff, Aygo’s little one-litre three beats the Etios’ 1.5 four-pot hands down – about 5.1 litres per 100 km versus the big-seller’s 7.2. It’s also a buzz to drive, with the five-speed manual shifter working brilliantly.
Impressions: Although rear seat legroom doesn’t cater for huge rugby players, your 5’4” student and three of her buddies should be comfortable. Headroom is quite good and foot space is excellent but, unusually for a four-door car, the rear windows are hinged at the leading edges and open only as far as a latch permits. As an experiment, we loaded up three large male journalists who found that, for journeys up to about sixty kilometres, co-pilot and rear passenger could co-exist peacefully.
The boot lip is fairly high at 75 cm, the well is 30 centimetres deep and it’s not very long, looking more like a dropbox than a conventional loading space. There are two bag hooks, pull-tabs to tilt the 50:50 seatbacks and a cargo cover that doesn’t stay in place very well. We mentioned the spacesaver spare wheel or pump kit earlier.
Aygo may not be the budget, mass favourite that Etios is but within its design parameters it’s perfectly sized, fun to drive, economical to run and just a little bit Bohemian. That’s what makes it special.
Test car from Toyota SA press fleet
This is a one-man show, which means that every car reviewed is given my personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every test car goes through real world driving; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.
I do my best to include relevant information like real life fuel economy or a close mathematical calculation, boot size or luggage space, whether the space is both usable and accessible, whether life-sized people can use the back seat (where that applies), basic specs of the vehicle and performance figures if they are published. In the case of clearly identified launch reports, fuel figures are of necessity the laboratory numbers provided with the release material.
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SA Roadtests
South Africa
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