Aston Martin working on Ferrari 488 rival
British car-maker confirms mid-engine supercar will challenge Ferrari and be on sale as soon as 2020Aston Martin's boss, Andy Palmer, has confirmed the secret mid-engine supercar his compoany is working on will rival Ferrari's 488.
As revealed by motoring.com.au earlier in March, the Brit sports car maker's motivation behind developing a mid-engine supercar was that it would draw inspiration from the state-of-the-art Valkyrie hypercar but, until now, it wasn't explicitly known who Aston would target with its new supercar.
Now, according to Autoexpress, the new mid-engine supercar will be a direct rival for Ferrari's 488.
“We have one car every year for the next seven years. It starts with our GT cars: DB11, Vantage and Vanquish,” Palmer told the British mag.
“In 2019 we’ll have DBX, then we’ll have, for the sake of argument, let’s call it a [Ferrari] 488 competitor. Then we have Lagonda, which is Lagonda One and Lagonda Two. Each car has a seven-year life, so in 2023 you have DB12.”
As well as the dates, Palmer said the new mid-engine supercar would "share DNA with the Valkyrie" as well as technology from the forthcoming all-new Vanquish replacement.
As well as sharing DNA with the wild hypercar, Autoexpress reports that Red Bull F1 designer is also likely to lend his expertise in its creation, potentially helping the British car-maker design its advanced aerodynamics.
It's not known what engines will power its new model but Palmer has already ruled out the Mercedes-AMG twin-turbo 4.0-litre V8 as that engine has only been engineered for a front-engine application.
The British car-maker's CEO also confirmed the two luxury Lagona replacement models would be available with a pure-electric powertrain that will be further developed on the forthcoming Rapide EV.
Originally, the battery-electric Rapide was supposed to share its advanced powertrain and powerful lithium-ion cells with Faraday Future, but with question marks hanging over the fledgling start-up Palmer says the Rapide could switch suppliers to British F1 team Williams.
What’s coming from Aston Martin:
2017: Vantage
2018: DB11 Volante
2018: Vanquish
2019: DBX
2019: Valkyrie
2020: Mid-engine sports car
2021: Lagonda 1
2022: Lagonda 2
2023: DB12
Tags
Please see our Editorial Guidelines & Code of Ethics (including for more information about sponsored content and paid events). The information published on this website is of a general nature only and doesn’t consider your particular circumstances or needs.
