Vauxhall Agila

VAUXHALL SLINGS THE SETSQUARE
At last, Vauxhall has a strongly class-competitive city car. Andy Enright on the second generation Vauxhall Agila.


The demands placed on city cars grow ever more exacting with each passing generation. Time was when a city car needed only to be small, economical and cheap to insure. No longer. The latest Vauxhall Agila must also satisfy those demanding better safety, higher quality, lower emissions and classier styling. First impressions look good. On paper, it looks equipped to tick all those boxes.

As Vauxhall's Corsa supermini has become bigger and more complex, the vacuum beneath it is even more apparent. Step forward the second generation Agila. As with the MK1 Agila model, this is again a design shared with Suzuki (their car's called the Splash) but Vauxhall thinks their version will create bigger ripples and become the big fish in the small car pond.

Unlike the MK1 Agila, this is no outdated hand-me-down, the MK2 version sporting a bang up to date chassis and three engines that are certainly class competitive at the very least. The line up opens with a 64bhp 1.0-litre three-cylinder petrol unit and continues with a punchier 85bhp 1.2-litre powerplant. This engine is also offered with the option of an automatic gearbox which would certainly take the strain out of nose-to-tail city traffic. The range topper is the 74bhp 1.3-litre CDTi diesel that's also fitted to the Corsa and the Tigra. Rather underwhelming in the larger, heavier cars, it should endow the Agila with a reasonable amount of oomph.

The key criterion that Vauxhall wouldn't diverge from is a requirement for five doors in a city car. Kia showed that this was a strong attractor with its five-door Picanto, an otherwise fairly unremarkable car that garnered big sales because buyers didn't fancy herniated discs by hauling a child seat in and out of a three-door car. The Agila integrates those doors a good deal more cleanly than many city tots, the rising waistline of the car giving it a dynamic, wedgy appearance, albeit to the slight detriment of a good view out for shorter kids in the back.

The rear seat backs can also be folded down to create a totally flat load floor, serving up a total of 1,050 litres of available space. Suzuki Splash sister model aside, no other city car can touch this. The hip point for the front seat has been deliberately set high to make getting in and out of the car easy, offering a commanding view of the road and taking advantage of that high roofline. The styling is neat and very well resolved. There's a certain degree of Mercedes A-Class in the wheel at each corner stance while the rear three-quarter has elements of Renault Modus to it. Overall, the Agila is a very clean and cohesive piece of work.

Even with tight pricing starting at £7,595 and a choice of three trim levels, the Agila will need to be at the top of its game to face down the best in the city car sector. Right now that's still the Fiat Panda, another car that offers five doors and plenty of interior space. There's real change afoot in this sector though with new designs like Ford's new generation Ka and Fiat's style-conscious 500 making a welcome appearance. The struggle to carve out decent market share isn't going to be pretty but a year or so will demonstrate this automotive evolution at work with the fittest surviving and the rest left to lick their wounds.

The Agila is coming equipped to do battle, with big car features such as optional ESP stability control and four airbags. It will certainly plump Vauxhall's bottom line up a bit better than the old Agila, a car which failed to make much of a dent in the public consciousness. Vauxhall has wisely retrenched and learned its lesson from that episode, incorporating the best assets of that car - its space and five-door form - with the style and engineering of a Ford Ka or a Fiat Panda. The choice of a diesel engine certainly isn't going to hurt sales either.

When it comes to running costs, it's hard to criticise a car that, in 1.0-litre form, can exist on group 1 insurance and averages over 56mpg without the need for a diesel engine. The entry-level petrol and diesel models both put out no more than 120g/km of CO2, so you can expect a cheaper road fund licence courtesy of VED Band B and an exclusion from congestion charges where applicable.

The diesel can achieve up to 70mpg in extra urban use but even so, you really have to be clocking up quite a mileage to justify its £2,000 price premium - in which case, you really shouldn't be buying a citycar. It also needs pricier group 4 insurance.

For a major car manufacturer, Vauxhall is a difficult company to second guess. It seems to pour resource at sometimes quite esoteric market sectors. For instance, the company was busy bring the VX220 roadster to market when it had no class competitive city car. While this doesn't end up looking too clever on the balance sheet, it keeps us industry watchers on our toes. A long line of rather niche models such as the Monaro, Signum and VXR versions of the Meriva and Zafira have rather distracted us from the pressing need for a genuine profit-making model slotted in beneath the Corsa. The latest Agila is just that car and should do very well. This model makes most sense in its most affordable 1.0-litre guise: you really have to be clocking up quite a mileage to go for the diesel - in which case, you really shouldn't be buying a citycar.

In summary, as long as you get the right variant at the right price, this is everything an urban runabout should be. Cheap to run, fun to drive, economical and smartly styled. It's not the most fashionable urban scoot out there - but it could very well be the best.

  Renault Clio III range

  Fiat Panda range

  Suzuki Swift range

  Mazda2 range

  Ford Ka Two-Tone range

  Suzuki Splash

  Volkswagen Scirocco

  Skoda Fabia range

  Ford Fiesta range

  Vauxhall Corsa range

  Hyundai i10

  Vauxhall Meriva range

  Vauxhall Corsa range

  Vauxhall Zafira range

  Vauxhall Signum range

  Vauxhall Meriva

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