Cute city car that can cut it on the motorway

Equipment levels are also worlds apart. The Aygo has air con, electric windows, sat nav (a £400 option on our test car), rear view camera, leather seats and DAB radio. The Mini only had manual sliding windows and no radio at all.

However, two features did match up to make that nostalgic link more real. Like the Aygo my Mini had a full length (aftermarket) canvas folding roof (although not operated electrically) and in a ‘things going full circle’ touch, push button start.

The Aygo feels well made and has a quality finish inside, particularly good is the latest Toyota infotainment touch screen system.

There’s lots of room for people in the front on stylish sports seats, but rear seat passengers will be a little cramped.

For this mark two model Toyota made a number of technical improvements under the skin, including enhanced vehicle safety.

I used the car for my daily 30-mile round trip commute and a quick 120-mile there and back to a motoring event in west Yorkshire which involved mainly motorway driving and more than a few M62 jams, and it proved more than up to the task being comfortable at the legal limit.

Even a full week’s supermarket shop on the Saturday was no problem with the rear seats folded down.

The steering is light and accurate, the Aygo turns into corners well and there’s good grip but the somewhat notchy manual gearbox is a bit of a step backwards over the previous model.

The car is still very frugal (up to 78.5mpg) and easy to personalise, with lots of options available.

Underneath the latest car are much of the mechanicals from the old model including that three-cylinder engine which has been tweaked to give even better fuel economy, although don’t expect to win the traffic lights grand prix. The biggest upgrade has been to the styling and interior, with lots of the latest tech.

There are various styling and equipment packages to chose from plus a three or five door body, that full-length fabric roof, and the ‘x-shift’ auto gearbox.

The Aygo range starts from £8,495 for the X model through x-play, x-pression, x-pure and x-cite up to our test car, the x-clusive 5-door manual which is £13,495 (including sat nav option).

More information at www.toyota.co.uk