Toyota's iQ: a micro-car priced above the bigger Aygo, and nobody paid

Toyota launched the iQ, a three-metre city car, in Japan in November 2008 and Europe in January 2009, priced at about £10,000 in the UK — more than the larger Toyota Aygo it already sold. The bet was that buyers would pay a premium for a tiny, well-made city car.

European sales peaked at 44,282 in 2009, then slid every year to under 1,000 in 2015. In the US the car arrived in 2012 as the Scion iQ at a base price of $16,435, and Americans never warmed to it: its first full year sold just 8,879 units, and its worst quarter, Q4 2014, moved 288 cars.

The same idea failed twice. The Aston Martin Cygnet, an iQ rebadged and marketed at about £30,000, was supposed to sell 4,000 a year to help Aston Martin hit EU emissions targets; it reached 150 in the UK and under 600 across Europe before production was stopped in September 2013.

Production of the iQ reached its end in December 2015, and the car was discontinued in Japan in April 2016. A low-volume iQ EV was limited to 100 units for fleets. The premium micro-car thesis never survived contact with a shopper.