The correct tyre pressures for the Toyota Aygo, launched in late July this year

One thing you should really get in the habit of doing, regarding car maintenance, is to check your car’s tyre pressures every time you refuel. It only takes a minute or two, but it’s a critical safety check on any car or truck.

The Toyota Aygo is a rather incidental model in the Toyota line-up in South Africa. It’s a niche style vehicle pitched towards the entry-level of the new car market, unlike many Toyota models which put functionality way before any styling considerations.

For this reason the Aygo sales hover just under the 100 mark each month, which is miniscule in comparison to the 1 200 or more Fortuners sold each month, or the Etios range, which sells about 1 000 a month, or the Yaris, which also regularly sees sales in the 1000 per month range ballpark.

Important youth-image car

However, Toyota sees the car as an important youth-market image builder here, and recently there was an extensive television campaign that aired during the recent EUFA Nations Cup soccer series, promoting the Aygo as a car worth a big audience when making an arrival.

The Aygo was recently refreshed  with new looks, in late July 2018, but essentially it retains the same city-car-type body-shell with a somewhat tiny luggage space. Engine-wise, all three models in the range use the 1,0-litre three-cylinder engine which produces 53 kW and 93 Nm of torque.

That doesn’t sound like much power, but enables the Aygo to accelerate to 100 km/h in the high 13-second bracket and achieve a theoretical top speed of 160 km/h. More important will be a claimed average fuel consumption figure of  4,3 litres/100 km and emissions of under 100 g/km that see the car avoiding the liability of  CO2 emissions tax.

Three-model range

The Aygo can be ordered in base-line  1.0 form at R168 500, in mid-line 1.0 X-Play guise  at R170 800 or in the top of the range 1.0 X-Cite model at R195 000.

The 1.0 standard  and X-Play models use steel wheels in 14-inch diameter, with tyre sizing of 165/65 R14. The X-Cite has 15-ich diameter wheels and these are shod with 165/60 R15 tyres.

Toyota quotes just one set of tyre pressures for all three Aygo models.

These are as follows:

 

Front: 230 kPa (2.3 Bar)                                     Rear 230 kPa (2.3 Bar)

By the way, the Aygo comes with a full-size spare wheel, and the tyre fitted to this should also be regularly checked for the correct inflation levels.