How Different Are They, Really?

The Aston Martin Cygnet is one of the quirkiest luxury cars you’d ever get to lay your eyes on. It’s a luxury city car based on the Toyota iQ, also sold in America as the Scion iQ, an excellent small car no one wanted to buy. The Cygnet was built to fix a very specific problem — fleet emissions. The European Union was tightening emission regulations, especially the average emissions of car brands’ fleets. Exotic carmakers like Porsche were hitched to much larger auto corporations, whose collective emissions made the smoke left by these exotic cars seem like a drop in the ocean. Aston Martin had no such leverage for its gas-guzzling, carbon-spewing Vantages and Vanquishes. Hence, the Cygnet, a car that would bring Aston Martin’s collective fleet emission average to levels low enough for it to skate under the EU’s radar.

The Cygnet was made from 2011 to 2013 as a compliance car, a vehicle made to satisfy government regulations. Some examples of compliance cars are the Fiat 500e, Ford Focus Electric, Honda Fit EV, and Toyota RAV4 EV. Compliance cars are low-effort cars, i.e., not much effort or money is spent on developing them. They are either low-volume cars or simply badge-engineered, as in the case of the Aston Martin Cygnet.

Why not make an EV, then? Well, the year was 2011, a time when EVs were neither popular nor technologically advanced, and developing a new EV would have cost Aston Martin a lot more than simply slapping on a badge on a low-emission microcar from Japan. As expected, there were few takers for a rebadged Aston Martin microcar that cost twice as much as the car it was based on.

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Badge engineered to the extreme

Usually, when you see badge-engineered products, they come from companies with a similar vision. Toyota and Subaru, Kia and Hyundai, Opel and Pontiac, Chrysler and Mitsubishi. The Cygnet was the result of a badge engineering experiment between makers of powerful, exotic sports cars and makers of fuel-efficient econoboxes. The Aston Martin Cygnet is a rebadged Toyota iQ, which was sold as the Scion iQ in the USA.

Both the Cygnet and iQ use the same platform, powertrain, dashboard, and even seats. However, in 2011, while the iQ cost $16,000, the Cygnet was priced at $38,000. Even today, used Aston Martin Cygnets are freakishly expensive. Obviously, Aston Martin had to make the Cygnet different from the iQ to justify the two-times price difference. So yes, there were a lot of tiny but meaningful changes that helped separate the Cygnet from the iQ and justify its premium prices, somewhat.

Same profile but different views

The Cygnet not only had Aston Martin badges front and back, but it even got the British carmaker’s signature grill, which was similar to the ones on the DB9 and Vantage of that era. Aston Martin did put in work to not only make the Cygnet look different from the iQ, but it also made sure that the Cygnet looked like an Aston Martin offspring. The Cygnet even got faux hood vents similar to the Vantage, and cool-looking vents integrated into the headlights. It ensured it looks quite different from the Toyota iQ’s closed front facia, which got a slit masquerading as a grille.

Unlike the iQ’s slab-sided fenders, the Cygnet even got side vents with a chrome strip running across, an Aston Martin design signature. For a luxurious touch, it has chrome strips on the door handles with ‘Cygnet’ embossed on the sides. While most of the iQ variants came with steel wheels, the Cygnet came with standard 16-inch alloys.

The Cygnet’s rear section too looked different from the iQ. The C-shaped clear lens taillights extending into the tailgate mimicked its more exotic cousins, besides lending a distinctive look. In comparison, the iQ got tiny, stacked tail lamps. Aston Martin went to great lengths to hide traces of the IQ in the Cygnet. That included covering the Toyota logo on the side window with a large Aston Martin badge. Even the generic Toyota key got a plastic cover with an Aston Martin badge on the back side.

Toyota outside, Aston inside

The Cygnet’s specialty did not lie in the way it looked or its performance. It was the opulent cabin. Despite being tiny, the Cygnet’s cabin was wrapped in high-quality leather, a far cry from the Toyota iQ’s plasticky interiors. The iQ did not get a glove box, but on the Cygnet, you could opt for a cool-looking folder clip to store documents. While the door panels, dashboard, and seats were wrapped in leather, the Cygnet even had brushed aluminum metal trim in places like the center console, gear lever, gear lever surround, and even on the door pads. Every inch of the Cygnet’s cabin was covered in leather and Alcantara. Heck, it even got shaggy carpets. When it came to interiors, the Cygnet’s cabin was as opulent as any other Aston Martin offering of that era.

That said, what truly separated the Aston Martin Cygnet’s cabin from the Toyota iQ was one single letter -” Q”. Q by Aston Martin is the carmaker’s in-house bespoke customization division. While the Cygnet was hand-painted like other exotic Aston Martins, you could choose from a host of bespoke colors, including special Aston Martin DBS colors as well as ones found on its previous cars. The same level of customization was available for the cabin, with a wide range of leather, Alcantara, and fabric finishes with contrast stitching. There was also the ability to personalize embroidered finishes or even an Aston Martin logo on the seats. The Q division added special badges on the car, both inside and out, similar to a Land Rover Special Vehicle Operations badge.

A focus on efficiency

The Cygnet’s engine was not about performance or even a throaty exhaust note you’d expect from Aston Martin cars. Instead, the engine had one sole purpose. To offset emissions emitted from Aston Martin’s other V8 and V12 sports cars. It wasn’t all bad. The 1.3-liter, four-cylinder engine shared with the Toyota iQ delivered a fantastic fuel efficiency of 48.7 mpg. That’s miles better than any other car with an Aston Martin badge.

The downside was that you paid $40,000 to drive a 98-horsepower microcar. Not just the engine, even the CVT automatic and manual gearbox options were shared with the Toyota iQ. The only differentiating factor, if you will, was the instrument cluster inset, which got a more pleasing design along with an Aston Martin logo. These tiny changes ensured that the Aston Martin Cygnet did feel different from the Toyota/Scion iQ, from inside the cabin at least.

All but one Cygnet models came with the 1.3-liter engine. One Aston Martin customer managed to convince the Q division to retrofit a V8 from the Vantage, creating what is effectively the perfect city car. This 4.7-liter 430-horsepower engine meant other parts of the Cygnet had to be modified to compensate for additional performance, like larger vents, wider tires, suspension, and breaks from Aston Martin’s sports cars. Now that’s a car to die for.

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