Toyota has launched an upgraded Aygo city car that offers more power and improved refinement, with a £435 price increase over the pre-facelift model.

Starting at £9695 for the entry-level VVTi X in three-door form - the only Aygo trim to get a three-door version - and £9995 for five-door cars, the Aygo tops out at £13,675 for top-spec X-cite trim with X-shift semi-automatic gearbox for the moment. Range-topping X-clusiv models arrive later in the year, with keyless entry and other tech tweaks. The best-selling trim will be £11,375 X-play, the second trim up from base-spec.

The Aygo is an important car for Toyota in the UK - of 101,692 total sales in 2017, 22% (22,264) were Aygos - the second-best seller in the range, behind the Yaris. 40% of Toyota's scrappage scheme transactions resulted in the purchase of an Aygo.

Launched in spring at the Geneva motor show and due on UK roads this summer, the Hyundai i10 rival, which has been on sale since 2014, now produces 71bhp and 69lb ft from its 1.0-litre three-cylinder petrol engine – a 2bhp gain and an unchanged torque output.

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The small boost enables a 0-62mph time of 13.8sec and a top speed of 100mph, improvements of 0.4sec and 1mph respectively.

There are also improvements to fuel economy, raising the Aygo’s 68.9mpg combined figure to 72.4mpg. Toyota says there are has also been a reduction to the car’s 95g/km CO2 output, although it is yet to finalise the exact figure.

A new fuel injector system, higher compression ratio and lower friction engine components are labelled as the key features enabling the improvements. The Aygo also now has a cooled gas recirculation system to improve efficiency and a more effective balancer shaft to reduce vibration.

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Alongside the powertrain improvements, Toyota’s engineers have tweaked the Aygo’s suspension and steering settings to sharpen its responses. Although exact details are currently unconfirmed, it suggests the steering rack may be slightly faster.

In addition, the 2018 car has thicker soundproofing that Toyota says enables a marked reduction in noise, vibration and harshness at all engine speeds.