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.

Fiat 500 UK Charity boost

One of the Fiat 500s donated by Fiat and decorated by Damian Hirst which were auctioned for the ARK Charity Over the course of a couple of days this week six Fiat 500s have been donated by Fiat for charity auctions and raised almost £500,000 in to the process. Which, cute and interesting as the Fiat 500 is, does sound rather a lot. After all, even the new Fiat 500C retails (in pop spec) at just over £11k.

Nissan Juke-R: What happens when a GT-R and a crossover get too cozy

Shoehorning a twin-turbo V6 from a Nissan GT-R into the little Juke crossover--that's the type of craziness we've come to expect to show up at the annual SEMA show in Las Vegas. But Nissan's not waiting for SEMA. Its European tech center has performed the powertrain transplant, with the help of race team Ray Mallock Ltd., to create the Juke-R.