A big part of the Goodwood Festival of Speed’s charm is that you never know exactly what to expect when it comes to the cars that take a crack at the Hill climb event. In the first day of the event, we’ve already seen a rainbow-colored Porsche 911, a lawnmower (yes, a lawnmower!), and a tiny city car that somehow found enough room in its body for a V-8 engine. That last car is the Aston Martin Cygnet, the cute little urban transporter that was essentially a rebadged version of the Toyota iQ. Even better, this V-8-powered Cygnet isn’t a hack job built by some loony tuner in some corner of England. Aston Martin actually created it, or to be more specific, Q by Aston Martin created it for a customer, and now it’s turning heads at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

What Makes the Aston Martin Cygnet V8 Special?

Sometimes, you just have to wonder what kind of sense of humor car makers have these days. On the surface, the idea of an Aston Martin Cygnet with a V-8 engine sounds completely ridiculous. But don’t tell that to Aston Martin because it apparently isn’t a joke. A customer — God bless this man — commissioned the British automaker’s world-famous customization arm, Q by Aston Martin, to make him a car that would generate headlines all over the world. But he didn’t want a one-off DB11 or a one-off Vantage. He didn’t even want a one-off DBS Superleggera. What he wanted was a one-off Cygnet that does away with its rinky-dink, 1.33-liter engine in favor of a 4.7-liter V-8 engine that’s sourced from an actual Vantage S. The result is a pocket Hercules on four wheels.

Look at the numbers for a second. The standard Cygnet delivers 97 horsepower courtesy of the aforementioned tiny mill. It’s not a good number by any means, but it’s good enough to get you from Point A to Point B. The one-off Cygnet V-8, on the other hand, packs 430 horsepower, more than four times the power of the standard errand-runner. To the shock of absolutely no one, the V-8-powered Cygnet is a hellacious ride on four wheels, one that's capable of hitting 62 mph from an idle position in just 4.2 seconds before setting off on a top speed run that maxes out at 170 mph. By comparison, the standard Cygnet can cover the same 0-to-62-mph distance in a tortoise-like 11.8 seconds, and while it does have a respectable 106-mph top speed, it’s nothing compared to what the one-off unit is capable of.

Separate from its capabilities, the Aston Martin Cygnet V8 also looks like a juiced up version of the standard model. The oversized fenders are a dead giveaway, and the extended wheel arches are there to accommodate the set of 19-inch alloy wheels it's wearing. Those wheels, by the way, are three inches larger than the original set, and they’re wrapped in performance rubber tires, ensuring that the car can live up to its own eccentricity.

Needless to say, the raucous city car made quite an impression at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. That shouldn’t come as a shock, though, because how often do you see a pudgy car carve up corners like this car did at Goodwood? Heck, it even hung out its rear at one point, and that’s with veteran racing driver James Walker manning the wheels.

There may be faster and more powerful cars at the 2018 Goodwood Festival. But for my money, none of them can compete with the Aston Martin Cygnet V8 and the spectacle it’s attracting at the event.

Further reading

Read our full review on the 2011 Aston Martin Cygnet.

Read more Goodwood Festival of Speed.

Read more Aston Martin news.