Aston Martin's Upcoming V-6 Engine Is Dead and Replaced by the AMG V-8

Aston Martin was in a tough position before Canadian billionaire and Formula 1 team owner Lawrence Stroll came in last January and gave the company a £500 million-plus lifeline and became its chairman. The new Vantage was a sales flop, and a 2018 IPO proved to be disastrous. Andy Palmer, CEO of Aston Martin from 2014 and the driver behind the IPO, vacated his position last May, and Stroll replaced him with longtime AMG head Tobias Moers.

It's hard to imagine anyone more capable of turning Aston Martin around than Moers. He helped transform AMG into the profitable powerhouse it is today, and while he himself is a bonafide car enthusiast and a brilliant engineer, he's a no-bullshit businessman too. Yesterday, we had our first chance to speak with Moers since joining Aston Martin last August, and he gave us a full rundown of the company's future. And better still, reason to be hopeful about the brand.

One of his first major moves at Aston was to go to his old employers at Mercedes-Benz and strengthen their relationship. Last October, the two announced that Mercedes would up its stake in Aston from 2.6 to 20 percent, making it the second largest shareholder behind Stroll. In return, Aston Martin gained greater access to Mercedes powertrain technology, and Moers subsequently canceled a new V-6 in development.

"If that engine was fully developed, when I came in here, I would not stop [its development], but the engine was not on a mature level," Moers says. "It was a concept, that they just finished, and there was a need for another large investment to bring it to life." Given the need to invest more in electrification in the future, Moers thought it best to drop the V-6 in favor of newer versions of AMG's V-8.

Aston Martin's old agreement with Mercedes only gave the English company access to technology that was a few years old, and limited ability to tune the V-8s it was being supplied. Now, Moers says, Aston Martin has more-or-less full access to the latest Mercedes technology, and the ability to make truly meaningful changes to engine calibration. The upcoming Valhalla hypercar was originally set to get the Aston-designed V-6, but Moers confirmed to R&T that it will now have the AMG 4.0-liter V-8, electrified in some capacity and tuned to provide a unique character.

"You cannot take a Black Series engine and just put it in a mid-engine car," he says. "You have to move that engine up to a certain level of electrification. And that's what we're going to do now."