Its range of customisable options should appeal to younger buyers, one of the reasons it's our hot favourite to replace the ageing Volkswagen Up as the best city car to have in 2022.
The 2022 Toyota Aygo X is expected to cost around £15,000 when it goes on sale later this year. The Aygo X competes with models such as the Volkswagen Up, Citroen C1 and Peugeot 108.
The Toyota Aygo X hopes to lure you behind its wheel with a combination of small SUV looks and customisable finishes.
You get a choice of contrast paint jobs including Cardamon (green, shown here), Chilli (red), Ginger (beige) or Juniper (blue) and they can be optioned with alloy wheels up to 18 inches in size – the biggest available on any city car to date if our memory serves us correctly.
The rest of the Aygo X's dimensions are relatively big for a city car. It's 3700mm long, has a wheelbase that's 90mm longer than the standard Aygo, is 1740mm wide and 1510mm tall.
The Toyota Aygo X's colourful exterior carries through to the interior where the insides of the doors are finished in body-coloured metal and you get contrast highlights around the infotainment screen and air vents.
The width of the interior has increased by 45mm – welcome because the old Aygo always felt narrow inside – and the boot capacity has also risen by 60 litres to 231 litres in total. Five doors also come as standard, further emphasising the Aygo X's pint-sized practicality.
The Toyota Aygo X's big-car feel continues when you consider equipment levels because you can have kit like a powerful 300W JBL stereo with a boot-mounted subwoofer. There's also a large nine-inch infotainment screen that has wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto so you can mirror your phone's screen on the car's big display and use its apps.
Another cool feature – one that's also available in the Citroen C1 – is the Aygo X's retractable fabric roof which peels open like a sardine can for a four-seater convertible feel. It's 20 per cent bigger than the opening roof on the old Aygo.
Safety kit is also boosted significantly and you can expect the Aygo X to lead the class. Its Safety Sense bundle of kit means the Aygo X can drive itself on the motorway and A-roads steering around bends and following other cars from a safe distance automatically.
To go with its pumped-up looks, the Aygo X has a driving position that sits 55mm higher than the car it replaces and a steeper A-pillar angle, both of which improve visibility out the front of the car – handy when you're squeezing through gaps in city traffic.
The raised suspension should also deflect speed humps with ease, you get an optional CVT automatic gearbox which will save your left foot in stop-start traffic and the car also has a 4.7mm turning circle.
Motorway driving should also be pain-free because the Aygo X has been stuffed full of sound deadening and, of course, you'll be able to fall back on those autonomous driving aids at a cruise.
The only downside on that front is performance because, with a 72PS 1.0-litre petrol engine, the Aygo X is not going to feel quick out of town. The five-speed manual does 0-62mph in 15.5 seconds, while the CVT does it in 15.6 seconds. On the upside, fuel economy of 60mpg should be possible and the Aygo's low CO2 emissions mean road tax is just £160 a year.
With the new Toyota Aygo X's arrival imminent, there are plenty of deals to be done on the outgoing model, which is priced from about £3500 for a high-mileage example or up to £17,000 for a high-spec preregistered car. We'd spend around £7500 on a 2016 model with less than 50,000 miles on the clock, a bright colour scheme (which suits the car's youthful image) and an infotainment screen that supports Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
It's only January 2022 is already looking like it's going to be a busy year for new car launches. We can already look forward to the new Honda Civic, Mercedes-Benz EQE, Nissan Ariya and the Volvo C40, while our dedicated New Cars of 2022 is constantly updated with the latest news.
As of now (January 2022) you can still buy an Aygo in the UK, but it will soon be replaced by the new Aygo X, which is due on sale later this year.
The price of the Toyota Aygo X has yet to be confirmed but we'd estimate it will cost around £15,000 to compete with the likes of the Volkswagen Up.
It's unlikely that Toyota will make a hybrid Aygo X because the costs will be prohibitively expensive at this price bracket.