Monday, April 30, 2018

Surprise Cygnet Sighting in Mayfair

A week and a half ago I was strolling along Curzon Street in London's posh Mayfair area on my way to visit the Duke of Wellington's Apsley House.

Mayfair is a great place for spotting expensive, exotic cars, so one would expect to spot a few Aston Martins.  But the one I spotted came as a total surprise.  Here is the photo I took (click to enlarge):


It happened to be an Aston Martin Cygnet from around 2012, a car that never got on my radar because they were not sold in the USA.

According to this Wikipedia entry (scroll down towards the bottom), Aston Martin wanted to lessen fuel efficiency penalties, so badge-engineered Toyota iQs (the main link subject).  The plan was to sell about 4,000 Cygnets a year, priority given to owners of Astons.  As it happened, only about 300 were made, half of which were sold in Britain.  So that car pictured above is a very rare young swan -- almost a black one ("black swan" reference here).

2 comments:

emjayay said...

I didn't know about Duke of Wellington's Apsley House. How was it? It gets good grades at TripAdvisor. Maybe next time I'm there?

Donald Pittenger said...

emjayay -- Sorry about the response delay, but I had an awful cold (so didn't check the blog) and then was in Germany.

You can't take photos there, but on the walls are several important paintings. Good for an hour's visit.