Toyota Agya: An affordable and fuel-efficient city car

If you’re trying to cut your budget and spend less in 2021, a small city car with an affordable price tag and high fuel efficiency is the answer. Meet the 2020 Toyota Agya based on the Daihatsu Ayla – a five-door urban hatchback featuring a modern design and lots of advanced facilities to make your commutes inexpensive and fun. It competes against the likes of Renault Kwid, Hyundai Grand i10, and Suzuki S’Presso.

The exterior design is aggressive and sporty with upwardly curving projector headlamps, roof-mounted rear spoiler, and LED-powered rear lights.

On the inside, you get a double-DIN touchscreen multimedia unit including CD, Bluetooth, auxiliary, and USB connectivity. You can also opt for a touchscreen audio system with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto functionality.

To make this offering competitive in South Africa’s price-sensitive A-segment for compact city cars, Toyota has made the Agya available in a 1.0-litre 3-cylinder engine generating 49 kW @ 6000 rpm and 89 Nm of torque @ 4400 rpm. Although these numbers look insignificant, they aren’t bad for an 835 kg hatchback that has to perform most of its duty in the city.

The mill pairs with either a slick-shifting five-speed manual transmission giving you full control, or a self-shifting four-speed automatic transmission for highly comfortable city driving.

The manual variant is more fuel-efficient, delivering an average of around 4.8 l/100 km with an emission figure of 112g CO2/km. Flooring the pedal hard will take you from 0 to 100km/h in 14.6 seconds and achieve a top speed of 165km/h.

Opt for the automatic, and it puts a tiny dent in the fuel economy and emission figures. It offers 4.9 l/100 km with an emissions figure of 115g CO2/km. This variant takes more time to zoom from zero to 100km/h and tops out earlier in the race, as well. The official 0-100km/h figure is 16.3 seconds with a top speed of 145km/h.

On the safety front, the 2020 Toyota Agya does not impress much but offers enough to give you peace of mind. Toyota has equipped it with two airbags up front, Anti-Lock Brakes (ABS) with Emergency Brake Force Distribution (EBD), and 2 ISOfix points in the rear for installing child seats. Sorry, it does not offer electronic stability control. Nevertheless, it has four stars from the ASEAN NCAP, which examines vehicles for South-East Asia. In the same test, its competitors didn’t perform so well; the Renault Kwid recorded zero, and the Datsun Go got two stars. The only exception is the Suzuki Swift, which notched up five stars.

Toyota South Africa is providing a 3-year/100,000 km warranty and 2 services/20,000 km service plan as standard. Additional service plan and warranty options are accessible on demand.

Agya MT - R178 600

Agya AT - R192 500

Agya MT (with audio) - R182 400

Agya AT (with audio) - R196 300

The 2020 Toyota Agya is a decent looking, fun to drive hatchback with adequate space for passengers as well as the cargo (260 litres load bay). The Toyota Connect with 10GB free data should also work to its advantage.

Looking for similar city cars to review? Check out the MotorHappy blog for some of our latest reviews. Click here to start reading.

Please note the imagery supplied in this blog was taken off www.cars.co.za.