Happy Tueday: The Cygnet is dead!

"b33g33" (b33g33) 10/08/2013 at 10:02 • Filed to: None

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We all love Aston Martin. Even under the cheap-plastic Ford ownership era, the British car company managed to churn out a number of achingly beautiful, sonorously sensual GT cars that kept people like Ray Wert tired and dehydrated.

After being cut loose from the blue mothership, Aston floundered around for a bit, releasing one special edition after another of it's greatest hits from the 90's and 2000's before finding its feet again with cars like the One-77 and the jaw-droppingly cool CC100 speedster.

I'm not sure when it happened, but somewhere between the V12 Vantage Carbon Black edition and New Vanquish, some one (I suspect the same Intern who penned the racist and offensive names of the passengers of Asiana flight 214) convinced Aston that it would be brilliant idea to slap an Aston badge on a Toyota iQ and sell it to fawning British aristocracy so that they could pootle around London feeling that they were still in 1930. With fleet MPG standards really starting to hurt, Aston made a deal with the Devil Toyota and signed the deal.

Nasty little iQs festooned with Aston winged badges and costing 3x a regular iQ rolled off the assembly lines looking for the proverbial mark.

Apparently, the average Engliswoman/man is smarter than Monty Python would have you believe and they DID NOT LIKE CYGNETS (NO SIR!).

So, let us raise a warm beer and toast the good sense and taste of our former masters and the inventors of the spotted dick as we watch one of the great travesties of the modern automotive age go off into the crusher.

Goodbye Aston Martin Cygnet. Too bad it wasn't sooner.

Aya, Almost Has A Cosmo With Toyota Engine Owned by a BMW. > b33g33 10/08/2013 at 10:11

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Yeah!

Altough I kinda wish there's an evil version of Cygnet. Some sort of Cynget with Aston Martin's V8, priced arround 5x the normal IQ.

ASheep > Aya, Almost Has A Cosmo With Toyota Engine Owned by a BMW. 10/08/2013 at 10:21

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That would have been crazy cool!

Maybe the Vanquish V12, transverse mounted between the rear wheels... It'd be a wheelie machine!

Aya, Almost Has A Cosmo With Toyota Engine Owned by a BMW. > ASheep 10/08/2013 at 10:26

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Well, a V12 is a bit too much I think.

Even V8 probably will be too much for those tiny tires or suspension.

I would say a V6 would be usable as an evil Cygnet, but they don't made a V6...

Bob Loblaw Made Me Make a Phoney Phone Call to Edward Rooney > b33g33 10/08/2013 at 11:14

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I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't get the Cygnet hate. I get why Jalops think they're supposed to hate it, but I think it's patently wrong.

The Cygnet was an interesting idea to allow Aston to keep making the cars that we want Aston to make. How many do you have to see driven on the streets? Next to none. They weren't sold to anyone but established Aston customers who, let's face it, probably aren't dying to drive a Cygent.

It was a clever little idea from a little company that's going to continue to need to be clever in a world that is increasingly hostile towards boutique sports car manufacturers. There's not much to hate, and plenty to like about the Cygnet being the kind of idea that allows small makers of passionate cars continue to make those passionate cars.

b33g33 > Bob Loblaw Made Me Make a Phoney Phone Call to Edward Rooney 10/08/2013 at 13:09

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They fluffed up a 10k car and tried to sell it for 30k.

Amazingly, they sold 150 of them.

It was a lazy, half-assed, disingenuous effort at placating the fleet mileage standard bearers.

A Tesla model S is a clever little idea from a little company. The Cygnet was just junk.

Bob Loblaw Made Me Make a Phoney Phone Call to Edward Rooney > b33g33 10/08/2013 at 15:15

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Lazy, half assed, disingenuous? It worked, and they sold $4.5 million worth of them.

The Model S isn't a clever little idea from a little company; it's a gigantically huge capital and intellectual undertaking that has resulted in a clever car. "Small" and new as Tesla may be, it has FAR more in resources at its disposal.

b33g33 > Bob Loblaw Made Me Make a Phoney Phone Call to Edward Rooney 10/08/2013 at 15:22

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Tesla was a TINY company with a smart, aggressive leader and a vision before the model S took off.

The fact that they were able to leverage the current market situation and raise capital while Aston wasn't simply reflects on the ineptitude of Aston.

Don't misunderstand me. I love Aston cars.

The Cygnet deserves an Aston badge as much as those Chinese SAICs deserve an MG badge.

Bob Loblaw Made Me Make a Phoney Phone Call to Edward Rooney > b33g33 10/08/2013 at 15:31

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You're comparing apples to oranges; they're not even close to being similar companies.

Aston is a boutique sports car manufacturer that has no designs on becoming a high-volume car maker; that couldn't be further from what Tesla is. Tesla can "leverage the current market situation" (let me pull out my buzzword bingo board) because it is a growth firm in a growth segment; Aston is not a growth firm in what is certainly not a growth segment. There's no ineptitude on Aston's behalf, it's just the reality of being a small sports car manufacturer. Take a look at the laundry list of botique manufacturers that have gone out of business in the last 10 years; take a look at Aston's own struggles. Being proactive isn't ineptitude, it's using aptitude.

Aston makes sportscars. Sportscars clash with corporate fuel economy standards. Aston needs a solution to deal with said corporate fuel economy standards. Sure, they could become a boutique electric sportscar manufacturer, but there are about a billion practical issues with that, not to mention that it's decidedly not Astonlike.

b33g33 > Bob Loblaw Made Me Make a Phoney Phone Call to Edward Rooney 10/08/2013 at 16:05

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We can split hairs all day on this.

Tesla chose to diversify their brand from being a boutique, struggling, sport scar manufacturer (remember the Roadster?) to a mass market car company who will probably make another sports car at some point.

Aston didn't need to do anything while they were under the Ford umbrella because the Fiestas and Kaas allowed them to keep stuffing underpowered, gas-guzzling V12s into every GT they make.

Oh, and speaking of hackneyed buzzwords: Apples to Oranges?

Pot meet kettle much?

Bob Loblaw Made Me Make a Phoney Phone Call to Edward Rooney > b33g33 10/08/2013 at 16:12

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It's not splitting hairs, it's the difference between treating two wildly different firms as the same animal and treating them as completely different firms. Tesla didn't choose to diversify. It nearly died before Musk swooped in, resuscitated it, and turned it into a completely different company. Tesla the small, sportscar manufacturer has very little to do with Tesla the current luxury automaker that will, in the near future, probably be very much more than that. Tesla's goal isn't to make sportscars, their goal is to sell huge volumes of EVs; they started with a sportscar that became a proof of concept, they're currently producing a luxury sedan as a means of selling a technology that would otherwise be too expensive for mainstream buyers, and they're going to move to mass market vehicles. Literally none of that describes Aston.

That is unless the way you view Aston is as an automaker that will one day be producing Cygnets not as a way to beat CAFE regulations but as a basic part of its life as a manufacturer because it produces all kinds of cars.

Also, sweetheart, apples to oranges isn't a buzzword/phrase, it's a widely accepted idiom used to describe two incomparable concepts or things. "Leveraging market conditions" is a buzzphrase because it sounds sophisticated and meaningful but holds very little meaning in and of itself.