Fail of the century #30: Aston Martin Cygnet

“A luxury solution to urban motoring in a unique and innovative format,” Aston stated proudly in 2011, “Cygnet was conceived, designed and built as a true Aston Martin.”

All very enticing, save for one tiny issue. It was cobblers. The Cygnet wasn’t conceived, designed and built as a true Aston Martin. It was a Toyota iQ with a chinny new grille and a bullock-worth of leather upholstery. An exercise in badge engineering with the cynical aim of lowering Aston’s average fleet emissions.

Which, in its own way, was kinda fine. As cynical strategies to lower fleet emissions go, aristocratic Aston giving a tiny Toyota the full Love Island makeover is, at the very least, an original one. And the standard iQ, while embodying exactly none of the traditional Aston brand values, was a clever, forward-thinking city car. If you’re going to pick a micromachine to roll in glitter, you could do worse.

Problem was, instead of acknowledging the £30k Cygnet’s humble underpinnings, Aston instead plumped for the ambitious strategy of ‘hoping no one would notice it was a £10k Toyota in fancy dress’.

No cigar. The Aston punters very much noticed, their moleskin-bound chequebooks remaining firmly closed. Initially hoping to shift 4,000 units annually, Aston sold a mere 150 Cygnets in the UK (all, presumably, to very tiny secret agents with no access to off-street parking) before canning production after just two years. At which point, we guess, Toyota revoked Aston’s licence to grille.