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It must be a tough life being a car designer these days. There you are, refining the styling of the spoiler on your next imaginary supercar when along comes Toyota, Peugeot and Citroen with an impossible brief for a new small car.

First there are all the rules and regulations any new car sold in Europe must comply with: ABS, crumple zones, emissions; an almost endless list. Then there are the crash tests it must pass. Then there's fuel economy and insurance group. Then there's the tiny amount of money it must be built for and still make a profit. And, oh yes, it will have to look good and drive well so people will buy it.

At this point the bad designers jack it all in and slope off to become a dive master on Koh Samui. But the good ones relish the challenge. And Toyota, Peugeot and Citroen must have picked some good ones because between them they came up with the Aygo. Here we have to pretend we're sailors because Toyota wants us to pronounce it "I-go", as in "Aye, aye, captain."

Of course it isn't just the Aygo. It's also the Peugeot 107 and the Citroen C1, all sharing the same basic structure, engine and running gear, and built in the same Czech Republic factory, but with different funky looks to set them apart. First to actually arrive here is the Aygo, which goes on sale in July from around £7,000 to around £8,000.

It's 3,405mm long, 1,616mm wide and 1,465mm high, which in old fashioned is 11' 2" x 5' 4" x 4' 10". Not a lot of car to carry four people in reasonable comfort. Under the bonnet is the lightest 4-seater car petrol engine in the World, an ‘all aluminium' 998cc three-cylinder VVT-I petrol engine that weighs just 67 kilos, yet pumps out 67 brake horsepower (50kW) at 6,000rpm and (69lb ft) 93Nm torque at 3,600rpm to pull along a kerb weight of 790-890kg. ‘Combined' economy is 61.4mpg. CO2 emissions are 109g/km, which means £75 a year VED. Bolt-on crash boxes front and rear absorb minor damage without affecting the structure, resulting in Insurance Group 1E, the lowest they go. And parts and servicing costs are also reckoned to be lowest of any small car.