My 18 year old student son has a 2010 Aygo. He likes it, I like it, it's very economical, "cheap" to insure and has been totally reliable. For such a small car with a tiny engine it holds its own well enough on the motorway too. Recommended. Also consider its first cousins the Citroen C1 and the Peugeot 107. All pretty much the same cars.

It would be very easy to talk about Fiestas etc etc, but here's another shout for the C1.

My daughter's best friend passed her test about 7 years ago, and her first car was a very natty-looking Citroen. The same year that she passed her test, the perky little jalopy managed to get three young ladies and all their food, drink, backpacks, tents, multifarious festival necessities etc etc to the V Festival in Leeds and back without any hassle at all, including bumping through mucky fields and sitting in long queues of traffic for hours on end.

I was most impressed with the cut of the C1's jib, even though to some folks it might look like one of Postman Pat's shoes.

Can't speak for the mechanical side of things, and I know that French cars in general have the reliability index of a dormant volcano, but judging by the success of the adventure described above, its a great little first car.

I'd also big up the Toyota Aygo/Citroen C1/Peugeot 107 (at that price, you are unlikely to get into a 108 which was the 107's successor from 2014 onwards). Never actually driven an Aygo, but driven heaps of C1's and 107's. We also used to have a Daihatsu Sirion, which had the same engine). In a car that light, the 1.0 engine is not the handycap you might expect, they are really nippy little things, literally bursting with energy like a puppy!. Don't get hung up on getting an Aygo thinking it will be more reliable than the other two, as has been mentioned, they are the same car underneath, just slightly different styling.

Edited by badbusdriver on 15/05/2018 at 19:31