LET'S RUN OR IT'S SURE TO CHASE US DOWN [547]

The Toyota Corolla is the biggest selling car in history, but I had to remind myself of this because, in its twelve generations over the last sixty years the car is, if not boring, then ubiquitous enough to blend into the urban background. I can reliably see three of them within five minutes of leaving the house one early Sunday morning, namely the one which I posted this article, one of which was a taxi. If a police car had passed me, that would likely be a Corolla too. “The car in front is a Toyota” was the company’s advertising tagline in the 1990s, but is more often true now.

I have noticed the wedge shape of the Corolla estate more recently as it has become more seen in the UK as a police car and taxi. The “Police Authority Specification Corolla”, only available as an estate, appeared in 2024 with a 1.8 or 2-litre hybrid petrol engine, and fully kitted out for police use by Toyota themselves, rather than by the police constabulary themselves or an intermediary, which I though had been the case to now.

Special rates are also offered for the Corolla estate, in a “Sports Icon” trim level, through Toyota’s fleet and business portal, which appears to be the source of the prevalent Corolla taxi. I have twice been in the back of these, at either end of trips to and from an airport, and they are perfectly serviceable as a taxi for hire, with enough rear room for four suitcases, although I do not agree that it can sit three people in the back. A “Corolla Commercial” is also sold on Toyota’s website, the back seats of the estate removed to install a flat floor, the remaining rear doors and windows not stopping them from describing it as a van.

The Toyota Corolla appears to be the only estate car still made in Britain, at Toyota’s UK manufacturing plant in Burnaston, Derbyshire, with engines made in another Toyota factory in North Wales. All Corolla 5-door hatchbacks and estates sold in Europe are made in the UK, and while a slightly smaller Japan-only version of the estate is made and sold there, it is based on the European design. From 2020 to 2025, the estate was branded as a Suzuki Swace, under a five-year licensing deal Suzuki made with Toyota that seems only to have changed the badging, as it was one of my airport taxis – I guess it filled a need for Suzuki at the time.

Estate cars – or station wagons, if you must – are not endangered as a category of car, the sport utility vehicle (SUV) proving the versatility of their form. But the shift towards SUVs by car companies has reduced the availability of “regular” cars that used to form fleets of company cars, taxis and police cars. The Ford Focus and Mondeo have ended production in Europe, the Volkswagen Golf is only sold as a hatchback, but the Vauxhall/Opel Astra continues to hold on, their prices are undercut by other manufacturers, including VW’s own Skoda and Seat, and by Toyota.

I could have easily written this article about Skoda, although their use as a service car is split: the Octavia, similar in size to the Corolla, is also often used as a taxi in the UK, the result of good word of mouth and competitive deals, but the next car up in size, the wonderfully named Skoda Superb, is more often used by the police on motorway patrols, most likely replacing the Volvo V90, another discontinued estate car. Both cars make good use of parent company Volkswagen’s parts bin and service network, which also readies their models for police use, but my guess is that, as the inventors of “just-in-time” manufacturing that saves on storage expenses through having parts ready only at the right moment, Toyota is passing on value in other ways.

NO THOUGHT FOR ME REMAINS HERE [83]

Waiting in the queue in TK Maxx to buy a purse, I looked at the various gifts and confectionery stacked before the checkout. On a shelf, at my eye level, was a die-cast model of a car – not one for playing with, as it had been screwed to a plinth. It looked like a Smart car, but with the grille of another company attached to it. I did not know a model was made of a car that appeared to have disappeared as soon as it, well, appeared – perhaps it was part of the marketing. Therefore, my initial thought upon seeing it was not, “oh, that’s interesting,” but, “they really made that?”

There actually was a method to the madness that was the Aston Martin Cygnet. When Aston Martin announced, in October 2010, that a concept car exhibited earlier in the year would enter production, they intended to provide a luxury version of the “city car,” like the Smart Fortwo, or the Ford Ka. Indeed, it was feasible that many owners of their sports cars may want a Cygnet as their weekday vehicle, so they can enjoy the same level of luxury as in their DB9 – the press release stated, “luxury is not constrained by scale,” and, “it is a car without compromise, just like every other Aston Martin.” That said, for a four-seater car slightly shorter (117.5 inches) than the original Mini, the only real boot space was achieved by removing the rear seats. However, for a city car as luxuriously upholstered as a DB9, and painted with the same paint, £30,000 could have been a bargain.

This is where the Cygnet starts to fall down. It’s main reason for existing were European Union guidelines concerning the carbon dioxide produced by a car company’s range of vehicles. Even though the emissions of their diesel models proved less than desired, the Volkswagen Group can balance out the CO₂ produced by their Bentley and Bugatti models with their smaller models from VW, Seat and Skoda. Meanwhile Aston Martin, not owned by a larger group, needed to introduce a car to cancel out the effects of their Vantages and Vanquishes although, producing 110 grams of CO₂ per kilometre, the Cygnet only reduced the company’s average from 304 to 290 g/km.

Even worse, the biggest problem for the Cygnet was that it was simply a tarted-up Toyota iQ, which had been introduced in 2009. “Badge engineering” is a common practice in the car industry – a previous family car of ours, the VW Sharan MPV-minivan, was also sold as the Ford Galaxy and the Seat Alhambra, while the latest-model Toyota Aygo, which replaced the iQ in 2014, is also known as the Citroën C1 and the Peugeot 108. What Aston Martin did in customising the iQ into the Cygnet went beyond changing the badges, but the 150 hours they spent on each car – a regular Aston Martin took 200 hours to build from scratch – only extended to how the car looked, and its interior. Just like iQ drivers, every Cygnet was stuck with a 1.3 litre engine, capable of 97 bhp, producing a 0-60 mph time of 11.5 seconds, and a top speed of 106 mph – I can only guess Aston Martin hoped prospective buyers would look past those figures.

The Cygnet lasted only two years in production, from 2011 to 2013, with the media and public simply unable to look past the Aston Martin badge and grille without seeing the Toyota iQ behind it. I have only ever seen one in the window of Aston Martin’s dealership in London’s Park Lane, and have never seen one driven on the road. Aston Martin hoped for four thousand sales per year: in the end, around four hundred were ordered upon its release, with only 150 in the UK, and that was it – you are more likely to see a DB5 or DB6 on the road. For all I know, they probably sold more of those die-cast models. In June 2017, Aston Martin announced an all-electric version of its four-door Rapide S luxury saloon, the RapidE, will enter production in 2019 – that’s a bit more like it.