- China’s Great Wall Motor has unveiled a new 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 at the Shanghai Auto Show.
- The hot-vee mill will go into a new GWM luxury brand’s cars and also the Tank SUV lineup.
- Great Wall calls the PHEV-compatible DOHC V8 engine a “secret weapon in luxury markets.”
Ford, Stellantis, Mercedes and even Ferrari have cut down on the availability of V8 engines over the last few years, but someone has picked up the baton, and they’re the last people you’d expect to be doing it: the Chinese.
We know China’s automakers are at the forefront of EV technology, but at this week’s Shanghai Auto Show, Great Wall Motor proved that it still sees value in big ol’ ICE powertrains. GWM debuted a brand new bi-turbo V8 that could be used to spearhead an attack on Western luxury brands. This is the same company that managed to stuff an 8-cylinder engine into a motorcycle last year.
Related: China’s GWM Souo S2000 Flat-8 Motorcycle Wants To Run The Honda Goldwing Off The Road
The engine is an all-aluminium DOHC V8 with a hot-vee, that is to say its two turbos are nestled in the 90-degree vee to place them closer to the intake ports. This helps cut lag and makes it easier to package the engine by reducing its width.
GWM, which called the motor “a masterpiece of Chinese large-displacement engines,” and a “secret weapon in luxury markets,” disclosed the 4.0-liter capacity though hasn’t revealed how much power or torque it makes. But one of the automaker’s execs told Drive it was designed for plug-in hybrid applications.
Unfortunately for V8 fans, it seems the hybrid powertrains seem to be designed to run on electric power in normal use, with the V8 only chiming in when the driver is towing or calls for a heap of power to pass another car. Hopefully there are a few modes to play with that let drivers enjoy the V8 experience whenever they want.
The V8 is earmarked for a new GWM luxury brand called Confidence, Drive reports, a name it probably couldn’t pull off with an inline four or V6 doing all the graft. But the engine will also go into some of GWM’s Tank SUVs (the Tank 700 is shown below).
This isn’t the first time GWM has dropped an eight-cylinder surprise. Last year it rocked up to the Beijing Auto Show with the Souo, a Honda Goldwing motorcycle competitor powered by a flat-eight – giving it two pistons more bragging power than the Honda.
