Who doesn’t love the guttural rumble of a V8 engine? But, like it or not, large internal combustion engines are going to become a rarer species in the coming years.
With the rapid shift towards electrification, and downsized ICE engines, petrol-heads are well aware that some of their favourite performance engines are on the endangered list.
You would be forgiven for thinking that Mercedes was about to give up on its big mills, with confirmation that the new C63 AMG will run a four-cylinder hybrid and there are rumours that the next E63 will go that route too.
But now it appears that the German carmaker could hold onto its turbocharged V8 motor, and perhaps its straight six too, well beyond the end of this decade.
Remember when Mercedes announced last year that it wanted to go all-electric by 2030, but only where market conditions allowed? Well, it appears that the company is anticipating that not all regions “will allow” this radical transition to take place so soon.
In an interview with Australian website CarSales, Mercedes’ vehicle development vice-president Joerg Bartels said the V8s could stick around if customers still wanted them.
“In the end it has to fulfil our overall CO2 strategy, and we have a clear path on that one: being CO2 neutral at the end of the ’30s, by 2039. And from 2030 we just want to be pure electric. But if there’s still a customer demand (for V8s) in some regions, and it’s still part of our offering, why should we stop it?”
However, he reiterated that changing demand patterns and stricter emissions regulations in Europe from 2025 could make it more difficult to justify the continued development of combustion engines.
“But some customers will still demand six or eight cylinders … You can find technical solutions for every request and every regulation, but sometimes it’s combined with higher costs and the customers are not always willing to pay for it,” Bartels added.
Last year Mercedes-AMG boss Philipp Schiemer told “Road & Track” that V8s would likely stick around for at least another decade.
“I think there will be a future, yes,” Schiemer said. "I think for the next 10 years we will see the V8s, for sure. We have a lot of customers who love their cars and I still think that we will see those people buying the (V8) cars for a long time.“
Of course, hybridisation will be the name of the game here, as seen with the new Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S E plug-in hybrid, which pairs a 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 with a 150kW rear-axle-mounted electric motor to produce system outputs of 620kW and 1400Nm.
Mercedes-AMG’s technical chief Jochen Hermann told “Road & Track” that hybridisation would open up many possibilities for the performance division.
“So, it’s all these different combinations that you can have and all of these driving modes. And once the team starts playing around, they realise, ‘oh, we can do this, we can do that’,” Hermann told the US publication.
We can only hope that doing “that” includes eight-cylinder hybrid propulsion for more models going forward.