Photo: cartalk
You all probably know about Toyota’s smallest car iQ, which is also marketed as a Scion in the United States. But you may not know that Aston Martin had a car based on it for sale until last year, the Cygnet , which wasn’t offered in the US. However, a man thought it would be awesome to make his own luxury iQ in Texas.
The story with the Cygnet started in 2011, when Aston Martin decided it should have a small city car in its lineup to suit the ladies and eventually lower the company’s carbon print. Since the English manufacturer had no idea how to properly erase everything it knew about sportscars and start from scratch with a small car, the engineers thought it would be nice to grab an already available car and turn it into a mini Aston Martin.
Since the Toyota iQ was already available and looked somehow fancy, Aston decided to stick with it. The automaker ditched the whole front end and replaced it with an Aston grille, new vented hood and slightly different headlamps. Side skirts along with a new rear bumper and a new set of rims made sure the car looked more interesting than the standard iQ.
The interior has been stripped out and fitted with much more sound insulating materials and fancy materials like two-tone leather and refined plastics here and there.
Total price for the Cygnet was three times bigger than the iQ, so as you can imagine, not many thought it’s a good idea to spend that amount of money for what was basically a Toyota with more funk in the trunk. And slow sales finally determined Aston Martin to axe the Cygnet program in 2013, saying that Toyota was ditching ditching the iQ in 2014 anyway... Yeah, right...
Anyway, when Texas lawyer Robert Kleinman heard that Aston Martin is slowly choking the Cygnet in 2013, he wondered if they might have some unused parts laying around in England so he can build his own on American soil.
He managed to acquire the whole Aston-designed front end took the car at Berli’s, a quality-obsessed body shop in Pflugerville, Texas, to transform it. The technicians there did an awesome job on Pierogi (yeah, that’s the car’s name, because he’s white and small) and you can swear now it’s an Aston Martin Cygnet.
However, if you come closer, you’ll see that the car still wears the Scion badges, as Robert want’s to keep it close to its origins.
via CarTalk
Since the Toyota iQ was already available and looked somehow fancy, Aston decided to stick with it. The automaker ditched the whole front end and replaced it with an Aston grille, new vented hood and slightly different headlamps. Side skirts along with a new rear bumper and a new set of rims made sure the car looked more interesting than the standard iQ.
The interior has been stripped out and fitted with much more sound insulating materials and fancy materials like two-tone leather and refined plastics here and there.
Total price for the Cygnet was three times bigger than the iQ, so as you can imagine, not many thought it’s a good idea to spend that amount of money for what was basically a Toyota with more funk in the trunk. And slow sales finally determined Aston Martin to axe the Cygnet program in 2013, saying that Toyota was ditching ditching the iQ in 2014 anyway... Yeah, right...
Anyway, when Texas lawyer Robert Kleinman heard that Aston Martin is slowly choking the Cygnet in 2013, he wondered if they might have some unused parts laying around in England so he can build his own on American soil.
He managed to acquire the whole Aston-designed front end took the car at Berli’s, a quality-obsessed body shop in Pflugerville, Texas, to transform it. The technicians there did an awesome job on Pierogi (yeah, that’s the car’s name, because he’s white and small) and you can swear now it’s an Aston Martin Cygnet.
However, if you come closer, you’ll see that the car still wears the Scion badges, as Robert want’s to keep it close to its origins.
via CarTalk
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