Ulrich Bez confirms that the Aston Martin Cygnet WILL be produced....

+1000

 

If various countries, pressured by the Greens, start requiring each automaker to
have a fleet fuel mileage average (probably above 20 mpg) then look for Ferrari, Lamborghini, etc. all to have little puddle jumpers wearing their badges in a couple years.They will give them away at cost just to get their fleet average acceptable. And these cars will be little jewels, reviving interest in hot small cars (think Abarth).

So it's not as silly as it looks, it's just to ensure survival of the gas guzzling 200 mph supercars. Kind of like letting you buy a .50 caliber Desert Eagle pistol if you buy a .22 derringer as well.

 

Can anyone say "Cadillac Cimarron"? My apologies to anyone who just lost their lunch...
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The Cim wasn't a bad idea, the execution however... Caddy should have been aiming at that market at least 10 years earlier after witnessing the emergence and viability of the compact luxury market with cars from BMW and Rover.

If A-M wanted small, I'm kind of perplexed why they didn't use a Focus RS as the platform instead of this platypus. The criticisms would remain but at least a ProDrive-Tickford modded RS awd might have been closer to Aston Martinhood than any other plebeian effort. Ford might have given them a hand in development too, they still retain a minority ownership in A-M.

 

That's just reality knocking at the door, hard. It might get a lot worse than this. It's not that difficult to imagine the new gas guzzlers being outright banned and the old ones collected in a Cash-For-Clunkers program that involves no cash. Pretty hard to justify 400+hp cars on a practical level. Even 300hp is a stretch. There are plenty in the gov that would sign such a piece of legislation right now. With exploration for new petroleum reserves effectively illegal in the US it's not hard to see where this all ends up. Sad and stupid.

Bob S.

 

I have a colleague who goes beserk over SUVs, thinks they should all be
banned; is now enjoying hugely the sell off of the Hummer. He forgets that his family owns a mountain cabin at Big Bear Lake and that sometimes you need an SUV with 4wd to get there; so he wants to deny all the public from having 4WD SUVs just because he thinks they are wasteful. He is an elitist of the first order; if he has no need for it, nobody should have any need for it, but since he's not a family man he has never had to tow a boat, or camping rig, and since he's in the intelligentsia, never had to own a working truck.

Similarly I see a clouded future in which an environmentalist with too much power will mount a campaign to ban cars with over 500 hp; on the grounds they are not needed; which technically they aren't but since, say for instance the 2010 Shelby Mustang weighs 1000 lbs. more than th e '65 Shelby Mustang, it has to have more power to be a performance car just to keep up the reputation.

I predict that the first sign in the U.S. that the Greens have taken over the car industry will be when they ban the Corvette as a nonsensical difficult-to-justify car, first they will start with the ZR-1 and then eventually ban all of them. Then they will target the Shelby Mustang, the Viper and so forth. All in the name of preventing Global Warming.

Then with little interest in what's new out of Detroit, the American auto industry will atrophy more and the only zingy cars will be from other countries.

The Greens remind me of the story about the camel--do not let the camel's head inside your tent or pretty soon, the whole camel will be inside.

 

I think there's a quote somewhere from the Lamborghini boss himself that said that only half of the supercars they've ever made get driven, and those that do get driven cover only 2500-3500 miles a year on average. His point was that all Lamborghinis ever made produce Co2 gasses equal to about 10.000-12.000 normal cars in a year! Or something like that...

I can totally understand the uselessness of many V8 SUV's in the urban cities (*cough* Cayenne *cough*). But punishing supercar owners is by far the stupidest thing envoirMENTALists have ever come up with!

 

Just remember that the pre-emissions equipment cars of every ilk are really horrible polluters compared to today's cars. The progress that's been made is phenominal.

If we could only elimnate the zealotry and focus on reasonable goals of continual improvement. There are a lot of very high performance cars out there now. It's not just the exotics. As long as there's a big push for efficiency high horsepower cars are going to be a big target no matter how clean they get.

 

The first official photos here:

http://www.pistonheads.com/astonmartin/default.asp?storyId=21214

Horrible.

 

I know I'm not with the majority here but I like it. The interior looks cool, but I like tacky interiors. But this is probably not good for the brand.