Every car is an argument about what matters, and the Daihatsu Ayla makes its case with Petrol engine and 48 kW. Daihatsu built from 2013 — as electrification stopped being an experiment and the crossover took every market. Mark Widjaja, Nobuhiko Ono and Jirou Matsueda drew it.
The story
The Daihatsu Ayla is a city car designed by Daihatsu and manufactured by Astra Daihatsu Motor in Indonesia since 2013, primarily developed for emerging markets. The Ayla has also been sold by Toyota (Daihatsu's parent company since 2016) as the Toyota Agya in Indonesia, South Africa, Tunisia and Americas (except North America), and the Toyota Wigo in the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Brunei and Vietnam through an OEM agreement. The car is also slightly reengineered and manufactured in Malaysia by Perodua as the Perodua Axia. The first-generation Ayla and Agya were first unveiled at the 20th Indonesia International Motor Show in September 2012 and went on sale a year later, in September 2013.
The second-generation models were unveiled in February 2023 and went on sale a month afterwards. The name Ayla was taken from the Sanskrit word meaning 'light', while Agya means 'fast'. The name was chosen to comply with the Indonesian government-endorsed Low Cost Green Car (LCGC) tax exemption program which requires an Indonesian-inspired name. The program also requires for an Indonesian-inspired badge to be used, with the Ayla using an A-shaped front logo while the Agya for the Indonesian market opting for a Garuda-inspired front badge (except for the second-generation Agya GR Sport which is not eligible for the LCGC program).
What is underneath
Power comes from Petrol engine; 48 kW is the published figure; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. It weighs 730 –. Work it out per tonne and you get about 66 horsepower — unhurried — enough for the job, not for the bragging. It shifts through a 5-speed Manual transmission / manual / 4-speed Automatic transmission / automatic. The layout matters: the engine drives the front wheels, the packaging choice that gives a small car a big cabin. The wheelbase is 2450 –. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Its place in the line
Its family tree is legible: assembly was at Karawang, West Java (ADM), Indonesia. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Honda Amaze, the Honda N-WGN, the Dongfeng Fengguang 330 — show what else the money bought that year. Nearby in the Daihatsu catalogue sit the Daihatsu Applause and the Daihatsu Atrai.