Aston Martin Cygnet – For The Love Of God Don’t Do It!
Two car posts in one go hardly sum’s up the emphasis for this blog, but I promise this one is related to marketing and not just self indulgence.
Take a look at this monstrosity:
This is the Cygnet concept car that Aston Martin are planning to put into production. Why am I so against it? Well to start with it’s a Toyota. The entire concept is based on a partnership with Toyota that see’s the Toyota IQ as the base model for the car. The Cygnet will be stripped out and decked in colours and materials to suit individual customers, but aside from some changes to wheels the iQ will be mechanically untouched, have Aston Martin lost the plot?
There’s a reason that people want to own an Aston Martin, it’s largely because they will never be able to. Aston Martin is an aspirational brand that people aspire to become a customer of. The mentality being that you own an Aston Martin, and you’ve made it in the world.
This is their selling point, this is their brand! So why are they going to dilute thier greatest asset by launching this monstrosity onto the market?
“The reasoning behind the partnership is to enable Aston Martin to comply with tough new fuel economy and emissions regulations coming into effect in Europe by 2012. The biggest hurdle for automakers will be to meet a target for fleet average CO2 emissions from vehicles of 120g/km by 2012. Low volume automakers such as Aston Martin, Ferrari and Lamborghini, which only sell powerful vehicles with high CO2 emissions will be hit hardest. Unlike Aston Martin, however, rivals like Ferrari and Lamborghini can group their CO2 emissions levels with their respective parent companies, in this case the Fiat and Volkswagen groups.”
A 20k Aston Martin city car based on a Toyota IQ – The worlds gone mad!
