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IT 
The history of automotive industry has given us many fascinating stories and many "pearls" that made us smile.
Producers always have something to tell about their cars, something we cannot even imagine.
Aston Martin is one of these, with a "little big story" which is called Cygnet.
Clearly out of place in a range of expensive GTs, luxury and sports cars, Cygnet is the Toyota iQ's "expensive sister".
Due to the restrictive laws on emissions, Aston Martin has had to lower the average emissions produced by its range by introducing an ecological car ...and voilà the Cygnet.
Inspired by Toyota, it has been enhanced in aesthetics according to the Aston Martin Family Feeling and style. One of the details that make this little car so beautiful are the back LED lights with a design that recalls the ones of the sisters.
Unfortunately, as we already know, also LED headlights can have some problems sometimes and for such a rare and exclusive car, spare parts prices instantly remind us Aston Martin trademark.
One of our customer turned to us due to a break down of one of his rear lights: the parking and stop lights (both run by a small set of LEDs) have stopped working, making it necessary to replace the entire tail light.
As in other cases, we have “saved” the customer from spending a lot of money for a spare part that is hard to be found.
We extracted the board from the tail light and analysed the situation: some LEDs, probably due to overheating, were literally crumbled and stopped running.
Thanks to our “craze” for LEDs, we immediately recognized the type of emitter installed and we started looking for a spare; simple, isn't it? Not so much...
These LEDs are Luxeon Rebel, one of the most expensive diode in history (if they were sold by weight, they would cost about 110,000€ per kilogram!); The real problem was that Luxeon Rebel LEDs are produced in different models, with different electrical specifications and in different colours.
Only for red colour, they are offered in 6 different wavelengths; So, what to do in order to find the correct one? We measured the spectrum of the other working LEDs and found the right and expensive spare part.
These LEDs are very tiny and characterised by two poles on the same side and a dissipation pole on the bottom; this makes the replacement really difficult: the surface needs to be heated in order to allow welding but the area that acts as a heat sink keep away the heat; so it is necessary to insist with welding, with the risk of overheating the LEDs even before they are well welded to the board.
After a very delicate operation lasted about 4 hours, we were able to restore parking and stop lights.
We made a quality check of temperatures and of any other possible malfunctioning with the microscope, then we closed the tail light.
The result? Excellent! With about a quarter of the cost needed for buying a new headlight, the Aston Martin Cygnet of our Customer is now once again back on the road perfectly working.
