When Sir Stirling and Lady Susie Moss arrived at the Royal Automobile Club's restaurant for what she thought was to be a quiet birthday dinner for two, what she found instead was her birthday present - a brand new Aston Martin Cygnet - on display in the central rotunda of the prestigious “palace on Pall Mall”, the culmination of six months' planning and “secret” correspondence between Sir Stirling and Aston Martin.
Moss explained: “My greatest partner in everything that I do, Susie is an amazing person and frankly the best wife a man could have. Since seeing a pre-production Cygnet in January I knew that it was the perfect car for Susie; a proper little piece of British luxury and perfect for our life in town.”
Each Cygnet (a cygnet is a baby swan, Cyril) is hand-built from a base Toyota iQ at Aston Martin's headquarters in Gaydon, and takes 150 hours to complete to the same standard of design and craftsmanship as the company's big sports cars.
It was launched in May 2011 and the first customer orders are arriving at European dealers now - including this one. Each Cygnet is different; like every Aston Martin it can be personalised to suit individual taste and style, bringing a new level of luxury to city cars.
Lady Moss' birthday present is finished in racing green, in honour of the Aston Martins Moss raced in the 1950s - culminating in a World Sports Car Constructors' championship in 1959 - with a simple, elegant interior trim hand-stitched in black leather with contrasting silver stitching.
The Cygnet was supplied through the longest serving of Aston Martin's 134 dealers, HWM Aston Martin of Walton-on-Thames, started in 1951 by fellow Aston Martin works driver George Abecassis, who actually gave Moss his first Grand Prix drives in 1951 and 1952 in HWM cars.