Needing a new clutch not a new car means Aygo stays, but the Citigo was very tempting

My Aygo reaches its fourth birthday this summer and will be due its first MOT.

The clutch needs replaced. (I’m a novice when it comes to car mechanics. So I’ve been driving around for a few weeks – maybe months – with a clutch that’s slipping. I asked: What’ll happen when the clutch finally goes? It’ll rev like crazy and the car won’t go anywhere, the mechanic replied.)

The MOT and clutch led me to a mid-life crisis. Obviously “mid-life” more in terms of the car rather than me! It suddenly felt like a good opportunity change cars.

With a penchant for small cars – “City Cars” as the class is referred to – the Aygo was perfect … other than its ability to chew through window wipers, water seeping in under the driver’s door, having to scrape ice off the inside of the front window in winter, crunching every time you put it in reverse, taking two years to get the lock on the glove box lid fixed, and getting from first into second gear requiring a lot more force than it did when the car was new.

The habit of successive cars getting smaller was going to be hard to continue. Lengthwise, Polo > Mini > SMART roadster > Aygo. A two seater SMART was fun for six months four years ago, but not a long term solution. A Toyota IQ looks lovely, but comes with a price tag to match its high spec configuration.

The Volkswagen up!, SEAT Mii, SKODA Citigo seemed good candidates. They’re siblings made in the same factory, much like the Toyota Aygo/Peugeot 107/Citroen C1 cars. Same chassis, same enormous boots (compared to the Aygo), slightly different styling and options. All three have eco-models with Stop/Start technology that should save fuel and save the planet.

I test drove two of three variants this morning. The Volkswagen up! was a comfortable ride, light steering, nippy. Feels like a much larger car. Its downside was the garish dash – the demonstration model (an up! white) had a bright white dashboard to match the outer white paintwork. Sun glasses would be required to sit in it for a long ride. The Volkswagen badge on the front also pushes up the price.

All three cars have the option of a top-of-dash mounted GPS that also provides Bluetooth support. It’s removable and can be used outside the car. The touch-screen user interface was less than intuitive, though the voice-driven street finding was quite impressive.

The SKODA Citigo was an identical drive. Minor differences in the less in-your-face dashboard. Lots of difference in the price (lower) and options (better grouped). At school we told SKODA jokes. But it felt like a very solid car that I wouldn't be ashamed to own.

If anyone fancies sponsoring a blogger with a car for a year - not expecting any offers! - I’ll put up my hand for a SKODA Citigo SE, 5 door, GreenTech with a Convenience Pack (ie, parking sensors), Safety Pack, GPS and a spare wheel. And if winters are going to continue to feature snow, throw in a Winter Pack to heat the mirrors and front seats.

But back to reality. Neither dealer was going to have a five door car in stock before my Aygo needed its MOT on 1 August. And it wasn’t going to pass its MOT unless the clutch was fixed.

This whole vehicular crisis was born out of needing a new clutch. Over lunch it dawned on me that really all I needed was a new clutch, not a new car!

While a relatively expensive repair, it is a lot cheaper than a new car. And while a Citigo with a whizzy GPS and an engine that cuts out at traffic lights would be fun to drive, with a new clutch the old Aygo would still turn on a sixpence and could be “driven into the ground” as I stated when I bought it. After all, the Polo lasted with me and then Cheryl for eleven years.

So hopefully the clutch will be fixed next week – before it burns out – and the wee blue Aygo can be driven round for another few years before I need to go on another test drive spree.

But if you’re looking a small ‘city’ car, can I wholeheartedly recommend a SKODA Citigo SE GreenTech (with three years free servicing if bought before the end of September) from the very friendly sales staff at Mervyn Stewart on the Boucher Road. They came so close to selling me a car!

Friday’s antics

It was a morning of frantic, yet choreographed activity. The car changeover day. Leaving one back to Mallusk, picking the other up on the Boucher Road, and collecting kit for next week’s Tech Camp, and a supply of coloured card from Play Resource Warehouse over off Duncairn Gardens.

It started well, getting the diminutive Smart Roadster back to the Fleet workshop. It took a while to get the paperwork completed – they give the car a good inspection for wear and tear before accepting it back – and discovering that the bottle of magic run-flat tyre fluid hadn’t been returned by the last driver when I got the vehicle in January.

We stocked up with paper in the Aladdin’s cave, and headed south to Charles Hurst’s Toyota dealership. That was where the wheel’s (metaphorically) came off the plans. The salesman was off on leave, and while he had registered the car and sorted out the invoice, the car hadn’t been scheduled for its last minute clean and finish.

So after a few minutes of faffing and signing paperwork, we took the hint and left the garage to it for an hour and went into town to pick up the camera kit and laptops to support next week’s animation workshops. It was about then I wished that I’d got some breakfast before beginning this Dora the Explorer-esque escapade. Getting the “if you could be here for 11:45” text message, we hared back across to Boucher Road and arrived just as the Aygo was driven up to the showroom’s door. Good sign: right colour, right registration.

The showroom manager wandered across and spontaneously apologised for the morning’s delay, and explained that in these kind of situations he likes to offer customers a meal on him (up to a certain value!) to make up for inconvenience. So we’ll be taking ourselves out some night and giving him the bill. An unexpected (and appreciated) act of customer service. But then ...

Looking out the window while yet more paperwork was being sifted through, I noticed the smooth back bumper. Umm. Looked wrong. Parking sensors are normally pretty visible, as they are mounted flush on the outside of the bumper. Yup. The XtraProtected extra hadn’t been fitted.

So it’ll be back to the dealer to leave the car in some day next week for them to drill holes in the bumper and finish building it. Glad that Tech Camp’s running over on that side of town!

The only other snag was that paying the balance by Maestro (ye olde Switch) didn’t run smoothly, with the transaction referred to the call centre, who took an age to answer, and then took an age to get through to the bank, and an age to ask me questions and relay the answers over to the bank. Arghh.

Boy was I ever so glad to get to work, grab a tray in the canteen, and get to my desk only a minute late for the 2 o’clock teleconference.

But the good news is that the wee car arrived with a full tank of petrol and is running well. Zooms along quite happily. Turns on a sixpence (quite a large one) and has already had the back seats down and a pile of gear stashed in it. There’s a jack plug input on the front of the radio, so no need for cassette adapters or iPod FM transmitters. And the voice-activated Bluetooth (most major European languages and Cantonese catered for!) has still to be played with. Though I miss the way the Smart kept the brake on for a few seconds after you took your foot off the pedal (or until you hit the accelerator to move away). The handbrake will get a lot more use now!

Cars are shrinking ... at least, mine are!

I’ve noticed that my taste in cars is shrinking.

About eleven years ago I purchased my first car. A red VW Polo. As a 1.4CL model, it was perhaps slightly overpowered - at least for me at the time. But eleven years ago, a bit of oomph under the bonnet, electric windows and a decent radio (albeit with cassette) was attractive. We only let go of the Polo a few months ago, and until this year, it was very reliable.

Then there was a Mini. A company car. Yellow - to be easily spotted in the airport car park - and a joy to drive. The radio still had cassette and no CD - too expensive to get it added at the time. But on its fourth birthday, it came of age and was reclaimed to go to the great fleet sales auction.

The Smart Roadster was a bit of an accident. Never quite getting around to ordering another company car in time to meet the twelve week lead time, I ended up giving the Mini back without having anything else to drive. Translink and the bus service didn’t overly appeal. But there was a Smart on the reallocation list - cars given back by people leaving the company that aren’t yet four years old - and it seemed like a fun idea for six months.

Fun = wet seats, automatic transmission (which I at first hated and now love) and ice on the insides of the windows when it gets cold.

But it had the virtue of being small. Though its shortness in length was better than the incredibly low driving position which you get used to after the first time you nearly drive under a lorry in the queue at traffic lights.

The Smart is being MOTed this week, which means it’ll be coming of age in August. I’m going to miss the electronic speedometer - I like knowing that I’m driving at 31mph, rather than just a shade over the thirty mark. I’m not going to miss the car radio that I still can figure out how to programme the stations into the buttons, and the front boot that holds shopping as long as you don’t buy a baguette!

With six weeks to go, I needed a plan. I hadn’t realised that Charles Hurst ran the vehicular equivalent of Disneyland down at 62 Boucher Road. You could nearly test drive a car without leaving their premises. Showroom after showroom after showroom.

Having dispensed with the fanciful notion that I should order a Mini Clubman, I ended up wanting a small, repeat small, five door car, the choice became a simple one between three identical cars: Peugeot 107, Citroën C1 and Toyota Aygo. Identical, in that the mechanics are the same. Built in the same shared factory in Czechoslovakia the Czech Republic, the cars only differ in the bundles of accessories and pricing. And they share the same £35/year road tax.

Having test-driven all three within 18 hours ...

• The Toyota Aygo felt the more comfortable drive - probably down to some tweaking of the gears/pedals and slightly more carpet which baffles the engine and road noise.
  
• The Citroën C1’s drive felt really basic, and the salesman didn’t really have the people skills on Saturday morning to sell me a car. Their accessory bundles weren’t appealing either. Despite the three cars having identical dashboards, Citroën managed to replace some of the black plastic trim with shiny chrome that really looks out of place in a bottom-of-the-range car!
  
• The Peugeot 107 was nice, and drove quite well.

But the Toyota Aygo ended up a better overall match, with a package that included indoor goodies and minimised the external flash-ness. (After all, I can’t see alloy wheels when I’m inside the car, so why would I want to pay for them!)

It’ll be blue, and it should be waiting for me to pick up when I give back the Smart in August.

Did I mention the £35 a year road tax?

And the pattern is that my cars continue to get progressively shorter.

Hopefully in seven-ten year’s time, I’ll be looking for suggestions for another car. I’m guessing that by then the market will be concentrating on chasing the small car market, rather than the tanks and 4x4s that are the current fashion.

But is there a point where cars can’t get any smaller and still stay practical?