Vauxhall Agila

Road Test

Your Say

Test date Wednesday, March 19, 2008 Price as tested £8,495

For Doesn't feel cheap, good fun to drive, comfortable front seats

AgainstIt's rather expensive, pitiful performance, doesn't like cross-winds

The Agila came into being just before the turn of the century to satisfy a perceived need for a dedicated city car. The answer was provided by Suzuki — which remains part owned by General Motors — in the form of its space-efficient Wagon R.

Vauxhall installed its own engines and tweaked the styling slightly, but it remained very much a Suzuki product adapted by Vauxhall. Vauxhall says that the Agila is more of a joint venture, although it is built alongside the Suzuki equivalent — the Splash.

Like its Suzuki Splash sister, the new Agila’s purpose in life extends far, far beyond the traditional boundaries of budget transport, where how you got there mattered not at all compared to the fact that you got there at all.

The Agila is not merely pretty; it’s a real attention magnet. That such design fluency has been achieved within the usually style-sapping limitation of tall five-door hatch architecture is entirely to its creators’ credit, for it means that this is a car with a real chance of working in the real world.

But questions remain: should even a mid-spec 1.0-litre Agila like our test car really cost almost £1000 more than a car such as 1.2-litre Fiat Panda, a former Car of the Year and a favourite of ours since it was launched?

And because even small cars cannot live by city street alone, how does it fare when removed from its comfort zone?