The rumors surrounding Red Bull’s development of a roadgoing supercar are intensifying—if you missed it, news last month from the Goodwood Festival of Speed said Red Bull is contemplating the production of such a vehicle. Now, a report has surfaced in Autocar that suggests the model will be built by 2018, and that it will result from a collaboration with Aston Martin rather than, as originally speculated, Red Bull Racing sponsor Nissan/Infiniti.
Fueling Autocar‘s report is F1 designer Adrian Newey’s appointment to chief technical officer of Red Bull Technologies—a separate entity from Red Bull Racing—and recent hints from Red Bull that it and Aston Martin were in talks regarding “other,” non-F1 “projects.” (It’s said that Newey is very keen to leave a roadgoing legacy, and there are far worse minds an automaker could call upon to whip up a new hypercar than his.) Aston Martin had previously been linked to RBR as a potential F1 partner, although the company itself now says entering the top-tier motorsports series is unlikely.
Red Bull Racing is apparently seeking engines from Mercedes’ racing arm for F1, and that could easily extend to include road-car-specific powertrains and electronics, and Aston Martin does have a new, supercar-ready platform in the works that could potentially underpin the road car. If this seems far-fetched, a tangled web of technical partnerships could make such a thing easy: Infiniti parent Renault-Nissan and Mercedes parent Daimler have a partnership that covers various passenger and commercial vehicles and engines, and the relationship between Mercedes-AMG and Aston Martin is in full blossom.
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