Terrific news for all stick-shift lovers out there: Aston Martin will be unveiling a special edition of its Vantage supercar in a few days. For the first time in the history of modern supercars, the vehicle will combine a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 engine with a manual transmission.
Aside from the stick shift, the Aston Martin Vantage AMR will be getting numerous other handling and performance-related improvements to enable the driver to get “the best experience possible” out of driving it. No detailed information is available right now, though.
The car packs a Mercedes-AMG 4.0 V8TT engine that connects to a brand-new manual transmission Aston Martin had to design from scratch. The company admits that persuading the gearbox to work with this type of engine proved extremely challenging and necessitated developing custom transmission control software, among other things.
In its production form, the engine mentioned above churns out up to 503 horsepower (375 kilowatts) along with 685 Nm (505 lbft) of maximum torque. Whether the Vantage AMR will be getting it bone-stock or boosted to higher values remains unknown.
Photos: autocar.co.uk