Aston Martin DB11 with AMG V8 debuting at Shanghai Motor Show UPDATED

Aston Martin DB11 loses its V12 (pictured) in favour of an AMG V8 – debuting at Shanghai

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The new Aston Martin DB11 is to debut at the Shanghai Motor Show in April with a new V8 engine from AMG, reports Chinese press.

Update: An Aston Martin spokeswoman has been in touch to say that the Aston Martin DB11 is NOT going to Shanghai with a V8 engine, and asking for us to correct the story, which we’re happy to do. So now we wonder: if not at Shanghai, when will the V8 DB11 arrive?

It’s almost exactly a year since the Aston Martin DB11 arrived to replace the rather long in the tooth DB9 – missing out DB10 to save confusion by befuddled buyers and to leave it with 007 – and it was rather appealing.

Perhaps not quite as beautiful as the glorious DB9 – although clearly form led – it contrived to be perhaps the first truly good DB to drive, promising to be more dynamic, more engaging and generally more everything than any DB that went before.

The DB11 also came with a new down-sized V12 engine, an engine which dropped from 6.0 litres to 5.2 litres but came with very able turbos to disguise its forced induction and deliver 600 seamless horses.

But a V12 engine is fast becoming an anachronism as legislators impose increasingly stringent emission requirements on car makers (all of the wrong sort, sadly), so dropping down to a 5.2 litre V12 was never going to be enough to satisfy all markets for Aston Martin.

So they’re taking a leaf out of Bentley’s book and offering a more acceptable V8 engine in their GT car, using their deal with Mercedes-AMG to get their hands on the V8 engine from the AMG GT with 530bhp and making it their entry-level DB11.

Apparently, so say Car News China, this new downsized DB11 will debut in April at the Shanghai Motor Show in April, neatly offering Aston Martin a more tax efficient DB11 for the Chinese car market with its additional tax for luxury cars with more than 4.0 litres.

But, of course, Aston Martin aren’t doing this just for China, and just like Bentley it will be offering the new V8 DB11 across all markets.

It’ll be interesting to see if the V8 engined DB11 is a better car than the V12. The Bentley is.