Click onto Aston Martin’s website at the moment and you’ll be greeted with a Cygnet colour configurator. Now all of us have probably specced a few fantasy cars in our time, optioning up Porsche 911s or BMW M3s to our ideal spec, all the while knowing we haven’t really got the cash (or any cash) to afford the real thing. But it’s good fun, and the end result is usually pretty tasty.
But now car companies are using the colour configurators as a promotional tool, and the more outrageous the offerings the more likely we are to talk about them. Lexus lets you paint the LF-A pink on its website, and now you can create your own awful version of the Cygnet. It’s generating massive amounts of publicity for Aston – I’m writing about the company right now! And the sort of people who like the looks of a pink Cygnet are almost certainly the same people who’ll pay £30k for one once it goes on general release.
The CAR office has had a go and to the right are five of our worst designs; the blond in a white dress with the white Cygnet is obviously what Aston has in mind.
Want a go yourself? Click onto www.astonmartin.com. That interior picture (bottom right) isn’t a virtual mock-up I’m afraid though – it’s very much the real deal. Yikes.
And the rest of the Aston range isn’t safe either. Back at the 2010 Geneva motor show, Aston Martin announced the new DBS UB-2010 edition, a limited run of 20 Coupés and Volantes built to commemorate 10 years of Dr Ulrich Bez being the company’s chief exec. Each one is black, with metallic bronze leather, and Uli apparently personally signs each one off. But would you really want a special edition named after the boss? The VW Polo by Piech? Or the Wendelin Wiedeking Porsche Cayenne Pay-Off Edition (only one made, worth £43m)? No! Thank! You!
But did Aston have a choice? I’d just hate to have been in the meeting when the idea was suggested: either a brown-nosing minion came up with the idea of naming a car after the boss, or Bez himself. And would you be brave enough to cough bullsh*t? Would you?
Please Aston, stop it. Hopefully Daniel Craig will be sensible enough to make sure we never see the Cygnet in a Bond move. Ian Fleming would turn in his grave if 007 had to drive a dressed-up Toyota iQ.
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