{"id":1835,"date":"2026-08-31T10:47:47","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T10:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in4ride.com\/?p=1835"},"modified":"2026-08-31T10:47:48","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T10:47:48","slug":"gwm-engine-boss-michele-scotti-talks-v6s-and-v8s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in4ride.com\/?p=1835","title":{"rendered":"GWM ENGINE BOSS MICHELE SCOTTI TALKS V6S AND V8S"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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Michele Scotti<\/strong> \u2013 an Italian – has been in Mzansi<\/strong> for only less than 72 hours. He likes the weather. Fair enough. When GWM Sout Africa<\/strong> told me their Powertrain Director would be in the country, I immediately expected a Chinese<\/strong> man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scotti (the Michele is pronounced me-kheh-lee) is GWM\u2019s Powertrain Director for the past three years<\/strong>. Previously, ten years<\/strong> at General Motors, ten years at McLaren<\/strong>. Now China. He talks like an engineer<\/strong> who has had to become a businessman. And that is pretty much how he describes the jump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m learning more and more, which is the reason I keep changing,\u201d he told me at Festival of Motoring<\/strong>, powered by WesBank<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GM was volume<\/strong>. McLaren was niche<\/strong> and high performance. China forced a reset<\/strong>. Things are done differently<\/strong>. The potential<\/strong> still sitting there, he said, is \u201cgreat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also claims he saw it coming. Fifteen<\/strong> years ago, still at GM, he had a small run-in with a Chinese company and told himself to watch the market<\/strong>. \u201cThey might dominate<\/strong>.\u201d That is the frame<\/strong>. Everything else hangs off it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HI4, AS HE TELLS IT, IS NOT A STICKER<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have heard GWM\u2019s Hi4<\/strong> suite being used like another hybrid slogan<\/strong>. Scotti pushed it the other way. Hi4<\/strong>, he said, is an architecture<\/strong>, not a single part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Motors. Batteries. Petrol<\/strong> engines. Diesel<\/strong> engines. DCTs. Ordinary automatics<\/strong>. Even two-speed gearboxes<\/strong> meant to work with e-motors<\/strong>. Build the pieces, put them on the table, then pick for the market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSouth Africa is different to Italy, different to Thailand, different to Australia, and definitely different to China.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Too many new-energy<\/strong> pitches still treat the world as one charging-map problem. He is arguing for a manufacturer that wants to be global without pretending Gauteng<\/strong> drives like Shanghai<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HE THINKS EVS WIN. HE WILL NOT GIVE ME A DATE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I asked where powertrains go if governments get out of the way. He did not sell me a romantic<\/strong> story about combustion<\/strong> living forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Legislation has driven efficiency<\/strong> for twenty years, yes. The destination, in his view, is still electrification<\/strong>. EVs become the majority<\/strong>. Friends ask him about EVs. Same answer every time: when<\/strong>, not if<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A real battery breakthrough<\/strong>; same range, half the weight or half the price, and the combustion engine starts looking like clutter. Packaging<\/strong>. Subsystems. A radiator big enough to hurt the aero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until then, he wants a menu. Old Italian logic: under 10 000km<\/strong> a year, petrol. Over 15 000km,<\/strong> diesel. Now there are more boxes. A full EV doing 100<\/strong> to 300km<\/strong> every day may be the wrong tool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five years. Ten. Fifteen. A \u201cplethora<\/strong>\u201d of applications. Thirty years<\/strong> out, more EVs. He would not nail the date. I would not have believed<\/strong> him if he had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE 3.0-LITRE THAT IS NOT A V6<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the part I came for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While much of the industry is shrinking<\/strong> engines, GWM has a V8 from Shanghai and a 3.0-litre turbodiesel<\/strong> coming the other way. We wanted to know why they are walking against traffic<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The V8<\/strong>, he said, is niche<\/strong>, premium, flagship<\/strong>. Not tens of thousands of units. A supercar<\/strong> programme that also does marketing work: GWM as more than SUVs. And the first V8<\/strong>, he was careful to say, fully developed<\/strong> in China. Other V8s<\/strong> in Chinese metal still trace<\/strong> back to Germany<\/strong>, Europe or the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The diesel is the opposite instinct<\/strong>. Not a trend. A customer. Torque. Desert. The work a bakkie or a serious off-roader still has to do when the charging post is a rumour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I asked the question that needed asking: is this diesel a V,<\/strong> and at what angle<\/strong>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is not a V<\/strong>, apparently. It is a four-cylinder<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He enjoyed that. Why should a 3.0-litre always be a V6? Maybe marketing. \u201c3.0-litre V6\u201d<\/strong> sounds like a brochure<\/strong>. Engineering, he said, picks the layout for the job. They wanted a compact<\/strong> engine, not the width of a V6, mounted longitudinally<\/strong> and hooked to an automatic, not a transverse package<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four-cylinders can feel rougher<\/strong> than a six, so there is a balance-shaft<\/strong> system of the sort you usually find in premium applications<\/strong>. The claim is V6-like vibration. Also, the block is cast iron<\/strong>, not aluminium<\/strong>. Weight penalty accepted. Robustness<\/strong> first. GWM has its own foundries<\/strong> and could go aluminium. The internal brief is 300 000 kilometres<\/strong>. That is the mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Single turbo<\/strong>, not sequential twins<\/strong>. He has done sequential turbos on a 1.6. Expensive<\/strong>. Complicated. On this engine, reliability<\/strong> wins the trade. If you sell bakkies<\/strong> and body-on-frame SUVs in this country, that paragraph is the story. Not the supercar render.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THROTTLE, HIGHVELD AIR, AND THE CHINA CALIBRATION PROBLEM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chinese<\/strong> product arriving here still has a habit of feeling sleepy<\/strong> at the pedal. We put that on the table. He did not dodge<\/strong> it. They call it localisation<\/strong>. Part of his job is driving European-spec versions, because he drives like a European. The China-market car arrives with a long list. Mostly calibration<\/strong>. More reaction. Standing at Khayalami, he said it is closer to Italy<\/strong> than to Beijing<\/strong> traffic, where smoothness<\/strong> beats punch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I gave him our problem. Roughly half<\/strong> our market lives in Gauteng<\/strong>, around 1 700 metres<\/strong> in altitude<\/strong>. Cars sold in this country have to work thin air<\/strong> as a default, not as a holiday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His answer was extreme testing. Siberia<\/strong>. High desert. The Tibetan<\/strong> plateau. Lab simulation to 5 000 metres. Mountain passes to 4 800m<\/strong>. You do not always keep every Newton-metre. Physics<\/strong> takes a cut. They leave calibration<\/strong> margin so the engine can still make the same torque when you climb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is the right language for most. Whether the cars I drive next year match it is a road-test question, not a pit-lane<\/strong> one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE V8 I WOULD NOT LEAVE IN ONE BODY STYLE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scotti joined GWM<\/strong> for the upcoming supercar<\/strong>, he admits. That is the day job. High-performance PHEV, part of it already shown in Shanghai<\/strong> (2025) and Beijing<\/strong> (2026). He is also pulled across other programmes as consultant if not chief engineer<\/strong>, moving know-how between teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year in China I heard GWM\u2019s existing eight-cylinder<\/strong> – the non-V unit driving the SOUO<\/strong> motorbike<\/strong> – at idle. It already sounds like it wants a special occasion<\/strong>. Keeping a proper in-house V8 locked in a supercar would be a waste<\/strong> of an architecture, I venture<\/strong>. Other products in this line-up would wear it without apology, I probe<\/strong> further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He would speculate<\/strong>, carefully. That engine does not belong in \u201cthis\u201d kind of car. It could belong in another, in a different state<\/strong> of tune. Worldwide, he says, nobody develops that kind of engine for one body<\/strong> style. I have my answer, even if it is only half an answer<\/strong>. In the same vein he could not confirm a Tank 500<\/strong> with a V8, nor did he close that door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WHAT I TOOK AWAY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scotti is not selling \u201cdiesel forever\u201d<\/strong> and he is not selling \u201cEV next Tuesday.\u201d He is selling a company trying to own the whole drawer<\/strong>: motors, batteries<\/strong>, fours, eights, two-speed hybrids, and then dress the powertrain<\/strong> for the country it is standing in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For us, the useful sentence is the unfashionable<\/strong> one: a compact, iron-block, single-turbo 3.0-litre four-cylinder diesel<\/strong>, designed to last 300 000km<\/strong>, with altitude baked into the calibration, and a V8 programme<\/strong> running in parallel as proof they can do more than copy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether that diesel changes how I rank GWM will not be decided on a single encounter at the Khayalami Grand Prix Circuit<\/strong>. It will be decided on a farm<\/strong>, at a factory, at a construction<\/strong> site, on the N3<\/strong>, on a Highveld on-ramp, and on a gravel road<\/strong> when the last bar of signal dies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is the test he described. I just live it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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