Aston Martin's very different new car.
The name Aston Martin conjures up images of large, powerful Grand Touring cars, so what on earth are they doing launching a small city car called the Cygnet?
Worse still, this is not some bespoke revolutionary lightweight machine designed to change the way we think about small cars, but a Toyota iQ (Scion in the US) with a new nose featuring an Aston-style grill, and new tailights. The interior is completely retrimmed using the same materials as found in regular Astons. The results are best described as...odd.
While Aston's CEO Dr Ulrich Bez would like us to believe that this is a car with core Aston values for the owner of a regular Aston who doesn't want to drive his powerful GT into the tight city streets of a modern European capital, the reality is that this car has been hastily conceived to get Aston out of a legal hole. New European emissions regulations will impose large fines on manufacturers with high average emissions for their entire fleet, and this spells trouble for the existing Aston Martin range with their V8s and V12s, both of which are aging designs and less efficient than the engines of rival manufacturers Porsche, Ferrari and Lamborghini. Furthermore, unlike their rivals, Aston is not owned by a major manufacturer so cannot link its range to those of smaller less-polluting cars from sister brands.
While the Cygnet may be a necessary solution to a difficult problem, Aston Martin seem to have gone about it in a rather heavy-handed way. The iQ base car is not in the least bit sporty and is hardly the most attractive device in the first place. One would assume that the Cygnet will not greet its driver with the phrase, "Power, Beauty, Soul" on hte dashboard display, unless Aston has a good line in irony.
Initially the car will be offered to existing Aston owners and when they have all said no (or you must be joking), it will be offered to the rest of the population at large who will probably look on in bemusement at paying around £30,000 for an iQ with a leather interior and an odd nose.