pFiled under: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/conceptcars/" rel="tag"Concept Cars/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/economy/" rel="tag"Economy/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/aston-martin/" rel="tag"Aston Martin/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/toyota/" rel="tag"Toyota/a/pa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/aston-martin-cygnet-concept-1/2113553/"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2009/06/58032ast_opt.jpg" alt="" //abr / div style="text-align: center;"small style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"Toyota iQ-based Aston Martin Cygnet Concept - Click above to enlarge/smallbr //div br /With a nod to our current global economic and environmental issues, super GT maker Aston Martin has reportedly announced the world's first super luxury supermini. Having blown their development budget on the a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2009/05/20/aston-gets-social-releases-20-new-pics-of-v8-vantage-on-faceboo/"V12 Vantage RS/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2009/06/20/spy-shots-this-is-your-aston-martin-rapide/"Rapide/a and a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2009/04/27/first-completed-aston-martin-one-77-wins-concorso-deleganza-des/"One-77/a hypercar, they turned to an unlikely partner for some help: Toyota. Aston Martin has taken the a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2009/04/08/new-york-2009-the-scion-iq-goes-big-wheels/"Toyota iQ/a 3+1 commuter and given it a tailored suit from Saville Row. The result is the new Aston Martin Cygnet you see above. In case you're wondering, a "cygnet" is a baby swan, not to be confused with an ugly duckling.br /br /Although technically just a concept, word has it that the vehicle will be put into limited production and sold exclusively to existing Aston Martin owners, at least initially. There's a full press release a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2009/06/29/breaking-aston-martin-cygnet-adds-a-smart-set-of-clothes-to-the/"after the jump/a, but the Cygnet should sell for around pound;20,000 (around $33k USD) when it goes on sale late next year. The car will retain the iQ's unique 3+1 seating but will be tailored to the individual customer's needs when it is assembled in Gaydon. Think of it as a move to "1-down" BMW's MINI brand. We only have the one photo for now, but from what we can see it doesn't look as unfortunate as we might have expected with Aston's distinctive grille, hood cutouts, side vents, and of course, the winged badge. Still, you have to wonder what this sort of thing might do to the Engish company's brand equity, no? a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2009/06/29/breaking-aston-martin-cygnet-adds-a-smart-set-of-clothes-to-the/"Follow the jump/a for the presser. emThanks to everyone for the tips!/embr /br /[Source: Toyota via a href="http://www.autocar.co.uk/News/NewsArticle/AllCars/241124/"Autocar/a]pa href="http://www.autoblog.com/2009/06/29/report-aston-martin-cygnet-adds-a-smart-set-of-clothes-to-the-t/" rel="bookmark"Continue reading emREPORT: Aston Martin Cygnet adds a smart set of clothes to the Toyota iQ/em/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2009/06/29/report-aston-martin-cygnet-adds-a-smart-set-of-clothes-to-the-t/"REPORT: Aston Martin Cygnet adds a smart set of clothes to the Toyota iQ/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.autoblog.com"Autoblog/a on Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:26:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2009/06/29/report-aston-martin-cygnet-adds-a-smart-set-of-clothes-to-the-t/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/forward/19081120/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2009/06/29/report-aston-martin-cygnet-adds-a-smart-set-of-clothes-to-the-t/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/wlLS-0Ol65JWGvzAXlBi9dLvnh8/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/wlLS-0Ol65JWGvzAXlBi9dLvnh8/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/wlLS-0Ol65JWGvzAXlBi9dLvnh8/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/wlLS-0Ol65JWGvzAXlBi9dLvnh8/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=WVi7sTXFvMM:FsH38yX6QZY:wF9xT3WuBAs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=WVi7sTXFvMM:FsH38yX6QZY:wF9xT3WuBAs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=WVi7sTXFvMM:FsH38yX6QZY:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=WVi7sTXFvMM:FsH38yX6QZY:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/WVi7sTXFvMM" height="1" width="1"/

Read More...