Car Throttle

Recently Aston Martin launched a Toyota IQ as an Aston Martin. Aston Martin calls it the Cygnet. It is of my opinion that brand marketing and product placement for product awareness has reached an all time high (or low) with this Cygnet. We had Aston Martin tee shirts, bicycles (I remember reading about it sometime in the mid 1990s) and now we have an Aston Martin car that isn't really an Aston Martin. Car manufacturers have begun to reinvent brand marketing whether we like it or not. Some time ago, in order to create brand awareness, car manufacturers like most large companies out there put their names and logos on simple stuff like tee-shirts, key chains, cheapo ball-point pens, mugs and notepads. Now, in the age of

Earlier this month, Aston Martin released official details on the Toyota iQ-based Cygnet minicar. The car has been met with howls of dissaproval from Aston Martin purists, and has left many scratching their heads. Regardless, Aston Martin is announcing some measures that should quell some of the worries that people had about the car. First of all, there is one very big barrier for entry: you must already be an Aston Martin owner. That means buyers of the Cygnet will be an exclusive club. That is an important thing, being the Cygnet's relatively small $35,000 asking price could ensure that a new vehicle with the Aston Martin name on it isn't far out of reach for quite a few people. Offering the car to just anyone would destroy the