There are plenty of reasons not to buy into Aston Martin's cover up of the Toyota iQ, but if you have already paid twice or perhaps even three times as much for a cooler grille and a luxed up interior and still aren’t happy about the way the Cygnet looks and sounds, Project Kahn has some select upgrades for you.

On the outside, the British tuner fits the Cygnet with its own alloy wheels that are available in various colors (size 17-in. up front and 18-in. at the back), a new set of brake calipers finished in heat resistant paint, again in whatever color the customer wants, and bespoke exhaust tail pipes.

A Toyota iQ with the 1.33-liter gasoline engine will set you back £12,775 (US$19,900 or €15,100) in Britain. A base Aston Martin Cygnet with the same drivetrain will cost you £31,000 (US$48,300 or €36,300) but can approach the £50,000 mark (!), depending on the edition.

If you do the math, you'll find that the entry-level Cygnet costs almost two and a half times more than the car it is based on, and which is available in North America under the Scion brand with prices starting from $15,995.

Perhaps the most controversial Aston Martin model ever made - or to be more precise, re-made, the new Cygnet luxury city car has arrived in two more markets outside of Europe, in Hong Kong and Japan.

Essentially a heavily luxed-up version of the Toyota / Scion iQ, the Cygnet is available to order now in Hong Kong and Japan from the Aston Martin dealership network with deliveries expected in the first quarter of 2012.

Aston Martin’s chairman Ulrich Bez has admitted that sales of the subcompact Cygnet are “not as high as we hoped”. He claimed though that the reason is not the lack of customers, but of supply.

“I’m not satisfied with sales of the Cygnet” Bez told British magazine, Autocar. “We can’t deliver as many as customers want, as we don’t have enough stock. It is the sort of product a customer wants and decides they want on the spot –they don’t want to wait for their car to be built, but to drive it away there and then,” he added.

It’s been more than two years since we first laid eyes on Aston Martin's stunning One-77 supercar, but we're still enamored with its striking looks. At this year's edition of the 2011 Frankfurt Motor Show, the British automaker brought along an example of the One-77 finished in funky brown color. Read more »

Unlike Bentley, Lamborghini, Ferrari and Rolls-Royce – who are owned by highly successful mainstream brands Volkswagen, Audi, Fiat and BMW respectively – specialist manufacturers such as Aston Martin have a hard time in the market.

Whereas a company like Mercedes-Benz can afford to spend €5 billion (US$7.1 billion) in one year on research and development, the Gaydon-based manufacturer of performance/luxury coupes is planning its next models on the eight-year-old platform that first underpinned the DB9 coupe in 2003!