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Official: Aston Martin gets its hands on Mercedes AMG engines & Electronic Architecture

Aston Martin & AMG confirm they’re getting in bed together Back in December we reported that Aston Martin had new investment from Investindustrial and wondered if that would mean – thanks to an existing relationship between Investindustrial and AMG – if we’d see Aston Martin finally getting access to AMG’s engines and platforms. By May, things had moved on and it was clear that Aston Martin and AMG were in talks for Aston Martin to get access to their engines for the next generation of AML’s cars. Now those talks have borne fruit and AMG and AML have signed a letter of intent for Aston Martin to “access significant Mercedes-AMG GmbH and Mercedes-Benz Cars’ resources, allowing the development of bespoke V8 powertrains and the use of certain components of electric/electronic (e/e) architecture.” Interestingly, there’s no talk of V12 engines – which could mean Aston Martin are going to move from the current Ford V12 for the DB9 and Vanquish to a powerful V8 from AMG – and nor is there talk of sharing platforms.

Chevrolet to pull out of Europe

General Motors is ‘strengthening’ its ‘European brand strategy’ by pulling Chevrolet out of mainstream markets in Western and Eastern Europe. This is ‘largely due to a challenging business model and the difficult economic situation’ – but does not mean that Chevrolet is set to disappear entirely. On Bing: see pictures of European Chevrolets Find out how much a used Chevrolet costs on Auto Trader Instead, Chevrolet ‘tailor its presence’ by offering only select ‘iconic’ vehicles from the marque’s global portfolio.

GTO Judge poised for a comeback

The Trans Am Depot is adding to its lineup of converted classic muscle cars with the 2014 GTO Judge, based on the Chevy Camaro. The company already builds a “Smoky and the Bandit,” Trans Am, Trans Am Hurst Edition and what they call the 6T9 GTO, all made to look vaguely like the originals. Trans Am Depot only teased the new classic on its website in a video, but it impressively beats a current gen Shelby Mustang in a drag race.