Volkswagen Taigo review

The Taigo comes in five trims. Prices start at £25,870 for the entry-level Life spec, which nets you 16in wheels, an eight-inch digital dial display, lots of black plastic cladding and black roof rails. It also comes with LED lights and Travel Assist as standard. Not bad.

Next up is Match trim for £26,045, which upgrades you to 17s, keyless entry and a rear-view camera. That’s a no-brainer over Life spec.

Style trim is the half-way house (sort of) at £29,645, adding fancier alloys, the 10.25in digital display, LED matrix headlights, two-zone air conditioning, silver roof rails and upgraded seats.

R-Line isn’t much more at £30,600, incorporating new bumpers front and rear, fake chrome exhausts, strong alloy wheel designs and many R-Line badges. It also brings Eco, Normal, Sport and Individual driving modes.

Finally there’s the top-spec Black Edition, which introduces 18s, even more complex headlights, heated front seats and more interior decoration for £31,090.

All of those prices are for the piddliest available engine and ‘box combo, of course. Going from the 94bhp five-speed manual to 113bhp six-speed costs about £850, with the seven-speed DSG another £600 up for that engine. Mid-spec and up is where you’ll find the 148bhp 1.5-litre four-pot: it’s about £3k more than the 1.0 with six-speed manual.

Which one should I go for?

The 1.5 is the better engine, but that’s a hefty jump on price. If it’s too much of a stretch for you, stick with the 1.0 with the manual gearbox and spend some of the savings on the options list, where you can add in stuff like the two-zone air con and heated seats.

Put £4.5k down for a deposit and you can get into a Taigo Style for £320 per month over four years with an annual mileage limit of 10,000. Obviously you can play around with VW’s finance calculator to your heart’s content.