ONE OF THE most diminutive creations ever to wear the famous Aston Martin wings made its world debut at last weekend’s 2018 Goodwood Festival of Speed.
Dubbed the ‘The Ultimate City Car’, this one-off Aston Martin Cygnet has been built with a 4.7-litre, 430hp V8 engine from the Vantage S and a very short torque tube.
The V8 Cygnet has been brought to life for a very lucky (wealthy) customer through the ‘Q by Aston Martin – Commission’ service. This is Aston’s bespoke personalisation team.
Aston Martin Vice President & Special Operations Officer, David King said:
The V8 Cygnet shows the fun side of both Aston Martin and its customers. It is also a fine example of the engineering talent within the company as it’s no small achievement to fit the Vantage’s V8 engine so harmoniously into the Cygnet’s compact body.
For those who don’t know, the Cygnet is an Aston Martin three-door city car based on the Toyota iQ and it hit the market in 2011. It was powered by a 1.3-litre four-cylinder petrol engine that produced 98hp and 125Nm of torque.
This new V8 model is powered by the 4.7-litre, naturally-aspirated V8 that is more usually found beneath the bonnet of the previous-generation Vantage S. The engine hasn’t been neutered for the Cygnet, and power and torque figures remain at 430hp and 490Nm of torque.
The new model has been developed in-house by Aston Martin’s engineers. They started with a right-hand drive Cygnet steel body shell and panels. A roll cage was welded to this, becoming an integral part of the chassis in the process, while a new front bulkhead and transmission tunnel were fabricated from sheet metal to accommodate the V8. Subframes and suspension are also derived from the previous generation Vantage and a steel fuel tank housing has been mounted in the boot area.
Despite all this work, the car remains distinctly Cygnet-like from the outside. The face remains largely untouched, with no extra bulges in the bonnet and just a subtle black mesh for the grille. However, there’s no escaping the bulging wheelarches which are needed to accommodate the significantly wider front and rear tracks.
These also house new forged, five-spoke, diamond-turned wheels, which have grown from 16 inches to 19 inches in diameter.
Around the back of the car there are new central twin exhaust pipes. The exhaust is a bespoke system with twin underfloor mufflers and catalytic converters.
Weighing 1,375kg when full of fluids, the V8 Cygnet has a power-to-weight ratio of 313hp/tonne. As a result, the V8 Cygnet is capable of accelerating faster than the V8 Vantage S with 0-100km/h taking just over 4.2 seconds. With a top speed of 270km/h it is over 98km/h faster than the regular Cygnet. Oomph!
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