WE DRIVE THE MAD V8 CYGNET
I’m grinning, the guard in the gatehouse is laughing and workers walking down the access road that Aston Martin’s Gaydon HQ shares with Jaguar Land Rover’s huge engineering base are pointing and scrambling to take pictures on their phones.
Well before reaching the national road network, this Cygnet’s status as a crowd pleaser has been confirmed, the attention won by its snarling V8 soundtrack turning to amazed incredulity when people see where it is coming from.
What it doesn’t feel like is a lash-up. Indeed, from the hugging embrace of the driver’s seat, it feels like a V8 Cygnet has always been part of the company’s extensive model plan. The driving position is higher than in the Vantage, and the shifted bulkhead has moved the pedals back to an anklecricking degree.
But the dynamic cues are the same as in the donor Vantage, with similarly weighted steering and the same proportional throttle response. The gearshift can get confused with overly rapid instructions through the steering wheel paddles, but performance feels as solid as the claimed 4.2sec 0-62mph time suggests.
Some of those who drove the car at the Goodwood Festival of Speed reported it feeling twitchy under hard braking but, on the lesser loadings appropriate to a 30-mile road route around Gaydon, it feels stable enough. There’s no stability control – apparently at the owner’s request – and overlapping throttle and big steering input creates the sensation of an impending slide; not something the shortness of the wheelbase gives me any ambition to investigate further. But the limits are well flagged and the Cygnet doesn’t feel anything like as difficult to control as it probably should.
The V8 Cygnet is always loud and – despite the best efforts of the air-con – the cabin stays sticky in moderate summer heat. The ride also gets uncomfortably choppy over rougher road surfaces. But set against the ma jesty of the overall project, and even the size of the budget necessary to realise it, such complaints are barely niggles. This is probably the coolest car I’ve ever driven.