When our colleagues at Motor1 Italia broke the story late last year on a quad-turbocharged V-12 from a brand-new automaker, it’s safe to say it caused a stir. Now, Giamaro Automobili has revealed its first two cars, the Katla and Albor, and both feature this mad, 2,100-plus-horsepower engine.
We got the chance to visit Giamaro a week before its official reveal event this Thursday to see this V-12 in the metal. Here’s everything we learned.
Giamaro is working with Turin engineering firm Italtecnica, which it has a stake in, for the engine. The V-12 displaces 7.0 liters, and rather unusually, it uses a 120-degree bank angle, with its four turbochargers nestled in the valley between the cylinder banks. To our knowledge, no one has ever made a 120-degree V-12 before, and in fact, the only production 120-degree engines are McLaren’s and Ferrari’s current V-6s. But 120 degrees is one of the three possible angles for a V-12—along with 60 and 180 degrees—that allows for an even firing order, and perfect primary and secondary balance.
Opening up the V-12 compared to the more common 60-degree angle made room for the hot-vee turbocharger arrangement, which helps shorten plumbing and improves throttle response. It also allows for a lower center of gravity. In theory, a 180-degree V-12, a flat-12 like Ferrari used in the Boxer and Testarossa, could have lowered the center of gravity further, but Giamaro deemed it impractically wide. The hot-vee arrangement requires intakes on the side of the engine, and it also takes up space that could be better used for other components.
Giamaro also says the 120-degree bank angle helps with cooling. There’s simply more room to dissipate the massive amount of heat that the exhaust system and turbos generate. Though the engineers are quick to point out that thermal management is still a massive challenge in an engine like this.
The V-12 displaces 7.0 liters, and rather unusually, it uses a 120-degree bank angle, with its four turbochargers nestled in the valley between the cylinder banks.
A clear inspiration for this quad-turbo V-12 design was the Bugatti EB110, a car that Giamaro’s head engineer, Loris Bicocchi, worked on, and Giamaro founder Giacomo Commendatore is a big fan of. Like with the EB110, Giamaro’s V-12 has its four turbochargers working in parallel, essentially one for every three cylinders. Once again, it’s the best solution for response times.
Like a bespoke racing engine, the Giamaro V-12 is entirely gear-driven—ie, no chains, no belts—and it uses a dry-sump oiling system with six scavenge pumps to ensure adequate lubrication in all scenarios. Commendatore also tells us the block is made from an aluminum alloy used in Formula 1, while the crankshaft is made from an aeronautical alloy.
Some numbers. The V-12 in the Katla makes 2,128 horsepower at 9,000 RPM and 1,481 pound-feet of torque when you use the car’s red key, which unlocks all the possible performance. A black key limits output to just 1,648 hp at 8,500 rpm and 1,147 pound-feet, while a white key lets the owner choose a limit between 394 and 789 hp.
All that is funneled to the rear wheels only via a seven-speed transaxle available as a manual or paddle shift and a mechanical limited-slip differential. It comes from CIMA, a company in Bologna that makes road and race-car gearboxes. Giamaro is also developing its own 11-speed dual-clutch for future use, though I offered to Giamaro’s engineers that the engine has so much torque, they probably only need one or two gears.
Giamaro and Italtecnica have put over 500 hours on the V-12 on the dyno, and the engine is also out testing in the real world in camouflaged prototypes. And I got to see it in a Kalta prototype with no bodywork. The sound and the power emanating from the thing is like nothing you’ve ever heard before.
"[The V-12] is the king of engines," Commendatore tells Motor1 through an interpreter. "We could’ve gone with a 16-cylinder engine like Bugatti, but the V-12 is the engine that guarantees the perfect balance between power and visceral sensation. It’s the best configuration possible."
