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This Aston Martin Cygnet is going to polarise opinion like no other Aston model in the marque’s 96-year history.

To some, the idea of dressing a baby Toyota with Aston Martin clothes, leaving the mechanicals unchanged, putting the famous old winged badge on the bonnet, doubling the price and selling it as an Aston Martin model to existing customers will come across as an abuse of some great traditions.

Amazing to think now about the hullabaloo surrounding the launch of the current Citroen C3. Because of its quirky looks a lot of us were talking about a 21st century 2CV. I was guilty of adding to the hype myself. What a load of rot.

In actual fact the current C3 is a miserable device, not worthy of being feted for anything. It’s crassly styled, pretty grim to drive and feels like it’s built from egg boxes next to its much more modern rivals.

Yesterday afternoon was a quietly important time for the future of the automobile.

The Royal College of Art’s prestigious vehicle design course opened to the great and good of the global car industry.

It’s early 2002 and Subaru is launching the new Forester in Tokyo. I go to the press launch and meet one of the Subaru head designers, an affable bloke who’s been at the company for years.

Not sure everyone’s going to go for the look of the new car, I venture. My designer friend rolls his eyes. “People always complain about Subaru design,” he sighs.

There was a buzz of excitement in the office this morning building up to the new Bentley Arnage pics and details being released.

Bentley isn’t the kind of manufacturer that puts out nine press releases a day, keeping us up to date with every new windscreen wiper design, it is much too grown up for that and moments like these don’t happen very often.

There was a time when I thought the Ulrich Bez-driven revolution at Aston Martin, though remarkable, might have run its course.

That was a year or two ago, when we started noticing how easily people could confuse a DB9 with a Vanquish and a Vantage V8, and when early claims of Aston quality to match a Swiss watch started being torpedoed by reports – though nothing like the monstrous Aston quality issues of yesteryear — from owners reporting less-than-perfect reliability.