The Aston Martin Cygnet has been dropped from the company's product line.
An Aston Martin spokesman told Autocar the company has no current plans to re-enter the supermini or city car segments, instead saying Aston Martin would focus on its core product range of sports cars.
Believed by many to be the justification for Aston Martin to continue developing V8 and V12-powered sports cars, the low CO2 emissions of the Cygnet - 120g/km - allowed Aston to lower its average CO2 emissions across its product range.
The £30,995, 920kg city car was originally introduced in 2011, and came with a four-cylinder 1.3-litre petrol engine, providing 97bhp and 92lb ft of torque. Our original first drive praised the car for its luxurious interior, and for its appeal to both the rich and the open minded.
It is believed that just 143 examples are still present on UK roads.
Internet rumours suggest that a similar project, possibly based around Aston Martin's technical partnership with AMG, could yield a new city car in the future.
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No surprise .....
... to hear this news. I've always rather liked the IQ.
Say it quietly, as there are only 143 around it seems, but it may make a good second-hand car in a year or two - Aston dealers seem to be selling them at about 30%+ off the new price for a low mileage 18 month old car.
Lost a lot of respect
When this silly car was shown, talked about and reviewed I lost a lot of respect for Autocar for actually being positive about it. It was, is and will always remain the biggest joke in Aston Martin's history. Utterly turd, and I expected Autocar is a non biased organ to just tell it like it was / is.
I rather liked it, in
I rather liked it, in principle at least.
Remembering that it was only sold to Aston owners, they've already got a pretty fast car, so no need to turbo it up. Instead the focus was on having a really, really plush interior in a small, economical city car, and I think they succeeded. That it wasn't a commercial success probably doesn't matter; Aston hadn't invested much in it, they did sell some and they got a lot of publicity.
While the Cygnet went a bit further down the path than I'd want, I do think it's a shame that almost all of the city cars are very biscuit-tin like. Not being very quick isn't a problem, but having nasty hard plastics, minimal kit and little sense of luxury is.