CROSS EXAMINATION

Tiny crossover is a brilliantly frugal city car, even without hybrid power

- ALEX WOLSTENHOLME

If you're after a tiny, frugal, practical city runaround, your choices on the new car market are currently quite limited. Razor-thin margins in this segment and increasingly costly regulations sent most manufacturers hurtling towards the exit door a few years back, leaving only a few faithful defenders to choose from today.

Toyota is one of these holdouts, and its Aygo X happens to be among the best of the breed - but if you haven't bought a new car in a while, the new hybrid model's £21,500 price might come as a bit of a shock.

Happily, you can pick up a four-year-old pure-petrol model for as little as £6500. These pre-facelift cars are still capable of 60mpg on a run, and most have a snickety five-speed manual gearbox that makes them surprisingly fun to punt around.

When the Aygo became the Aygo X in 2022, it moved onto an entirely new platform and was repositioned as a sort of pocket-sized SUV: still dinky but larger in all dimensions than before, with a raised seating position and the requisite lower body cladding.