The Americans call it "badging". You take the same model and stick a new brand on the front. Voila! Then a completely new model can be launched.
In 2005, the PSA group and Toyota started joint production of a newly developed minicar in Kolin in the Czech Republic. The same car has since been on sale as the Peugeot 107, Citroen and Toyota Aygo. The advantage of this collaboration is being able to reduce development and production costs. The only thing that distinguishes these cars is the integrated plastic bumper with grill, the rims and the paint colors.
It is therefore the "snout factor" that sets these cars apart. In 2012, all three models received an upgrade to the front. You can say that everyone has actually become a notch tougher in the face.
PSA and Toyota are no small players in the passenger car market. This "joint venture" venture has created an absolutely competent product that has been a hit, especially in southern parts of Europe. The design is very European – unfussy and dominated by function.
Customers can only choose a 1.0 liter engine that fulfills its function in a decent way. This concept fits well with Norwegian taxes. If you had wanted a larger engine, you would have ended up in the next car class in terms of price due to the tax system.
It is possible to order with automatic transmission. However, this is a very simple robotic gearshift solution that can cause problems in extreme wintry driving conditions. The advantage of the automatic transmission is that it does not steal power from the engine and thus does not send the one-off tax skyrocketing.
The cars have recently been downgraded to three stars by NCAP because ESP is not standard everywhere in Europe and because the side curtain airbags are not included in the base versions. In Norway, all cars are delivered with ESP. If you make sure to order the car with all six airbags, you get a four-star car in terms of safety.
A new car in Norway today should have ESP, 6 airbags and a radio as standard equipment. We have pre-selected this equipment in the configurations of the most affordable models in this series.
My choice
Here you choose the dealer and not the car. Go to the nicest dealer. Or should we say: Go for the muzzle factor?
