Toyota is bringing the ‘Kei’ into Europe, with the Aygo X Prologue giving us a taste of how it’ll look. OK fine – they didn’t say that exactly, but since small tiny crossovers like these don’t really exist outside of the adorable Kei cars in Japan, we’re just going to roll with it.
Currently, the Aygo X Prologue (the X is pronounced as ‘Cross’, if you’re wondering) is more of a show car than anything else, and from the images, looks like it only exists as a virtual rendering. It’s the work of Toyota’s European design house, ED2 that’s based right outside of Nice on the French Côte d’Azur, and it’s supposedly “designed in Europe … for Europeans”, with the sole purpose of making it stand out in any crowd.
Despite sharing a name with the Aygo, the X Prologue does stray quite a bit away in looks from the supermini – and that’s not taking into account its taller stature thanks to its new crossover body style. Specifically, the concept car gets a new wedged roofline, alongside massively flared arches to give it a more athletic stance.
Both the front and rear fascias are dominated by new full-width lighting elements, the front being a daytime-running light strip that wraps upwards to form a “wing-like” dual layer design, while the rear looks more like an evolution of the current Aygo’s lighting design.
On the Aygo X Prologue, Toyota also wanted to emphasise the “go anywhere” image of the mini crossover. These include a large lower grille up front surrounded by fog lamps on both ends and a skid plate element below, an integrated roof rack, and also a skid plate at the back housing a bicycle holder mount.
Even the wing mirrors also double as an action camera, designed to capture and share your “moments of exploration”. We figure that this probably won’t make it into production though, at least not in its current stylised form due to European homologation requirements.
Remember the whole standing out thing? Even its paint job gets a special treatment, inspired by chillis of all things. Here’s an excerpt from the press release:
In life, colours are central to our emotions. This is also true for Aygo X prologue. To bring the “spicy” concept to life, certain ingredients naturally presented themselves. The top four were chilli, ginger, wasabi and black pepper. Spiciest of all is “chilli”.
The red paint mix, called “Sparkling Chilli Red”, is given an extra boost with blue metallic flakes, and contrasted with black paint on the body work to give it a snazzy two-tone look.
“Fun and playfulness has always been at the heart of Aygo. Now, we’ve added to its DNA an additional pinch of hot spice,” added ED2 Design Director, Lance Scott.
No technical details have been shared so far, though it is understood that Toyota will be fitting a small internal combustion engine underneath the bonnet to keep the price low, as it is intended to serve the “entry point” market in Europe.
Rumours also say that despite this being a concept of sorts, the next Aygo will supposedly be launched within the next few months, with a design that will look very similar to what we’re seeing on the X Prologue – which is terrific news, because we love it. If only it’ll be brought over here onto our shores.
GALLERY
