If you or your children (or grandchildren) watch Sesame Street on PBS, you’re likely familiar with these lyrics by Joe Raposo and Jon Stone:

 

One of these things is not like the others,

One of these things just doesn’t belong.

Can you tell which thing is not like the others

By the time I finish my song?

 

With those lyrics in mind, we offer these two images:

 

And as Joe and Jon would say, “one of these things is not like the others, One of these things just doesn’t belong…”

 

And yet, according to Aston Martin, we’re supposed to believe that both of the vehicles shown are, indeed, Aston Martins. You know, vehicles worthy of James Double-Oh-Seven-Himself Bond!

 

Well, the car on the left certainly looks like something Bond, James Bond would drive. It’s the prototype of the One-77, Aston Martin’s new supercar, which Aston Martin says set an Aston Martin-speed record by reaching 220.007 miles per hour in testing. Aston Martin plans to produce 77 such cars, which will come with a 7.3-liter V12 engine, carbon fiber monocoque architecture and active aerodynamic technology. Delivery of the One-77 starts next summer, the automaker says.

 

Now, for that other car, the one that looks like something Miss Moneypenny might use for her daily commute to HQ. That, too, is an Aston Martin, or so says Aston Martin. It’s the concept for the new Aston Martin Cygnet that could go on sale in Europe even before the One-77.

 

This might work if the car had been specially prepared by Q and was packed with all sorts of great gadgets, you know, machine guns and ejector seats and the ability to maneuver under water and, well, why not invisibility while we’re at it? But except for the restyling of its nose and the upgrading of its interior, the only Q in the Cygnet comes from Toyota’s iQ, a microcar designed to compete with the (not so) Smart car.

 

And forget about that big and powerful V12 engine in the One-77; the Cygnet gets the three-cylinder, one-liter, 67-horsepower pumper from the iQ.

 

So why would Aston Martin, purveyor of such fine sporting machines, put its badge on such a car? Well, here’s our theory: In the next James Bond movie, Double Oh loses all his usual weapons and his One-77 runs out of fuel (which at 220-plus miles per hour figures to take about 12.007 minutes), so he climbs into the micro machine and attacks the forces of evil in his Cygnet.

 

Of course, Bond wins; the bad guys become debilitated because they can’t stop laughing.

 

-- Larry Edsall