Aston Martin Cygnet is unloved now, but it'll be a classic in years to come
So long, Aston Martin Cygnet. Your contract with Britain’s coolest company is over. After just three years, the company’s controversial city car has been canned.
It’s probably not unfair to say that the firm’s cleverly re-engineered Toyota iQ hasn’t been the success Aston was hoping for, which is a shame because it could’ve all been so different. Imagine if this ugly duckling had grown up into a Cygnet Vantage, with ceramic brakes, a bored-out engine and sharpened-up handling. In fact, imagine if they’d brought out a Cygnet GT Zagato with eclectic styling and a double-bubble roof. That would’ve been, in a faintly ridiculous sort of way, a very cool Aston.
Worst of all, Aston’s culling of its smallest offering disguises an inconvenient truth. The car it’s based on, the Toyota iQ, is a cracker. In fact, I reckon in 25 years’ time people will look back at the Japanese version as a classic.
Why? Well, for starters it’s a Smart that’s smart, managing to cram four seats into the same amount of space as the two managing by a certain Franco-German city slicker. Admittedly, it’s definitely a firm choice between having your mates or your bags behind you, but at least you get the choice in the first place.
More importantly – and this where I thought an Aston version would have been in its element – it handles fantastically well for something for so short and so tall. On that initial test drive I’d jumped from my 1984 Mini straight into the iQ, and the fact it felt lively and surefooted in such illustrious small car company meant it left a big impression.
It’s also got the fact it hasn’t been a massive seller – thanks to it being pricier than the roomy and equally fun Aygo – counting in its classic-in-waiting favour. If I can picture iQs attracting a bit of a cult following at car shows in years to come, I can definitely envisage what’ll be by then incredibly rare Aston-badged versions making classic car journos coo with excitement.
So the Cygnet had some brilliantly-concocted ingredients, the kudos of the Aston Martin badge and a nice premise – the company wanted us to think of it as the motor launch connecting its owners to their Vanquish and DBS luxury yachts – behind it.
Yet it joins the Radford Mini, the Panther Rio and the Tickford Metro as one of those luxuriously-packaged twists on existing small cars that didn’t quite work.