Few places exemplify the peak of the internal combustion engine better than the Mercedes-AMG factory in Affalterbach, Germany. There, individual workers assemble entire engines by hand, capping each one off with an emblem bearing their signature. The company’s philosophy? “One man, one engine.”
For decades, that philosophy helped build AMG’s brand. The Mercedes subsidiary is known for taking luxury cars and turning them into the German equivalent of muscle cars: fast, loud and a bit brutish. Its hand-built engines were sought after not only by consumers but other companies. A decade ago, it signed a deal with Aston Martin to supply the British marque with its 4.0-liter V8.
Now, that deal is living on borrowed time. On Monday, Aston Martin announced that it was entering into a partnership with Lucid. The upstart automaker would supply electric motors, powertrains and battery systems as Aston Martin transitions its core models to EV powertrains by 2030. Mercedes is out, and its stake in Aston Martin, which could have grown to 20%, is frozen just shy of 10%.
For over a century, automakers used engines to differentiate themselves from the competition. AMG was long known for hand-built, high-output V8s. BMW’s reputation stems in no small part from its silky-smooth inline-6s. Dodge’s muscle-car image was built on the back of the Hemi brand of V8s. Honda made a name with VTEC, GM with the small-block V8 and Audi got weird with inline-5s. There are more, but you get the picture.
With electric vehicles, though, all that expertise goes out the window. Of course, there are still ways automakers can differentiate their wares: They can generate space-age “zoom-whoosh” sounds to pump through the speakers. They can make fast cars or slow cars (though “fast” has won because EV power is cheap, and everyone likes fast cars). And you can still spend countless hours tweaking the way a car handles. But playing with cylinder arrangements or cam phasing or displacement — and being good at it! — doesn’t matter anymore.
For high-end, motorsport-adjacent divisions like Mercedes-AMG and BMW M, that’s bad news. Engines were their thing, and while the world was prepping for EVs, they were not. They’ve slowly embraced electrification, though it’s of the lukewarm variety: Both Mercedes-AMG and BMW M have bestowed their flagship models with plug-in hybrid powertrains at a time when regulators around the world are cooling on the technology.
While the AMGs and Ms of the world were dithering, startups like Lucid were busy stuffing more than 900 horsepower in a Mercedes Metris van, smoking Teslas and Ferraris in the process (to say nothing of an AMG E63 or M5).
While Mercedes’s original deal with Aston Martin covered gas-powered engines, it was expanded in 2020 to include hybrid and electric drive systems. In other words, AMG had a chance. Aston Martin’s partnership with Lucid effectively nixes it.
In other words, the new deal isn’t just another toll of the internal combustion engine’s death knell, it’s a sign that maybe the old guard isn’t keeping pace. (Perhaps AMG’s gendered motto “one man, one engine” was a hint.)
The “maybe” qualifier perhaps needs some explanation. Yes, maybe Mercedes-AMG wanted to keep its EV technology to itself. “Maybe.” But if that’s the case, where’s the 1,000-plus horsepower AMG EQS? Crazy amounts of power used to be AMG’s thing!
Instead, you can buy a Mercedes-like Lucid Air with 1,050 horsepower today, and later this year you’ll be able to get one with over 1,200 horsepower. By the end of the decade, Aston Martins will be proudly sporting Lucid’s insanely compact motors in place of Mercedes-AMG’s formerly vaunted V8s. Auf wiedersehen, AMG.