Posts Tagged ‘Cars’
Toyota iQ
For the last few years our second car has tended to be something small and funky. We ran several smarts including a couple of cabrios and the cars were great fun. They were however mechanically suspect as we had 3 engine failures in 3 different cars, all under 10k miles but that’s another story.
The final straw came when the cabrio roof failed and smart wanted close to £2.5k to fix it. A smart independent dealer sorted it out and the car was subsequently sold. Our needs had changed somewhat and we needed something slightly bigger than a smart so ended up with a Toyota Aygo Blue which is cheap as chips to run and has been utterly reliable. It is a cheap car and built to a price so the interior is a bit ‘plastic’, it’s noisy on the motorway and there is very visible evidence of cost cutting.
I’ve been tracking the launch of the new Toyota iQ and last weekend we finally had a test drive courtesy of Inchcape Toyota at Sandhurst. What a fantastic little car! Yes it is pricey but you get toys that are normally the reserve of much bigger cars; heated and folding mirrors, automatic xenon lights, auto wipers, keyless go etc etc.
On the road it was fine, the little 3 cylinder 1.0 engine was more than adequate, the wide body with a wheel at each corner gave it a stability that the smart just can’t compete with and it was very refined for such a small car. It coped very well at motorway speeds and wasn’t noisy at all. It is in a different league to the Aygo altogether.
Our Aygo goes back to the leasing company in a few months and I’m seriously tempted by the iQ but we do have a test drive of Fiat 500 lined up. It’s going to be close……….