Been mulling over the one-off Aston Martin V8 Super Cygnet for sale at Nicholas Mee & Co.? You might already be too late…
This little Frankenstein shouldn’t exist.
Aston Martin’s Cygnet was built to satisfy fleet emissions targets – an upcycled Toyota iQ trimmed in the finest hides, but powered by a 1.3-litre four-cylinder with less shove than a shopping trolley. Yet in a moment of inspired madness, Aston’s engineers found a way to stuff a naturally aspirated 4.7-litre V8 from the Vantage into a wheelbase shorter than a British summer, instantly doubling the cylinder count and more than quadrupling the power.
The result was a rear-driven, 430bhp city car capable of breaching 60mph in 4.2 seconds and blasting past 170mph.
Built as a one-off commission by Q by Aston Martin for a favoured customer, the V8 Super Cygnet began life as a standard car before being stripped back to the bare shell and completely re-engineered. Packaging a large-capacity V8 into a 3m-long car meant Aston’s engineers had to fabricate entirely new subframes, a new steel bulkhead, and reinforce the monocoque. To ensure the Super Cygnet was driveable, the Vantage S also donated its axles, double-wishbone suspension, transaxle gearbox and braking system. The changes were so extensive that the finished product shares only the body panels, glazing and lighting with the original Cygnet. Toyota GR Yaris, eat your heart out.
Given the donor iQ weighed as little as 955kg, all that heavy-duty hardware means the Super Cygnet isn’t as modest as you might hope at 1,375kg. Still, what could be described as the first-ever super city car boasts a power-to-weight ratio of 313bhp per tonne – comfortably eclipsing a Porsche 911 Carrera.
But this V8 Tardis is so much more than raw numbers. The Super Cygnet’s stubby wheelbase and rear-driven balance give it a handling character unlike anything else – a blend of hot hatch agility and muscle car lunacy. With a wheelbase of 2,020mm and a front track of 1,570mm, the Super Cygnet is as close as you’ll get to a car with a foursquare stance; it even has a limited-slip differential.
At the Goodwood Festival of Speed, Henry Catchpole took the wheel and summed it up best: “It’s just hilarious… It’s brilliant.”
Reining in the performance are massive six-piston callipers at the front with 380mm discs, and four-piston callipers with 330mm discs at the rear, metered via a V8 Vantage-derived pedal box with a bespoke brake pedal. The Super Cygnet is also equipped with the Vantage S’s seven-speed Sportshift II gearbox, mated to a bespoke torque tube and steel prop shaft.
Inside, it’s more Vantage GT8 than Cygnet, featuring a removable Alcantara steering wheel, Recaro bucket seats with four-point harnesses, a carbon-fibre dashboard, Vantage instrumentation, a fully integrated roll cage and an FIA-spec fire extinguisher. The Q division has still made some concessions to luxuries, however, with climate control and dual USB ports, underlining the fact that this is no novelty manufacturer project – it’s a fully engineered Aston Martin delivered to a customer.
And now, it’s for sale through Nicholas Mee & Co. Or rather, it was, because the advert now has a reserved banner attached to it. Given its one-off status, a ten-month build process and a mere 2,900 miles having passed under its wheels since its 2018 debut, the Super Cygnet will not have come cheap. The only remotely comparable project is the Brabus Smart Roadster V6, and they cost £330,000 each to build.
But the next owner won’t just be buying a car – they’ll be taking custody of one of Aston Martin’s maddest engineering excesses, a rolling contradiction that remains utterly, brilliantly unrepeatable.
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