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Russian president's limo getting tuned up with revved-up engine

Cortege is a project for building a family of cars for top officials

© AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko

YEKATERINBURG, July 12. /TASS/. A VIP limousine, which the NAMI research institute is developing for the country’s top officials under its motorcade project, will get an 850 hp 12-cylinder turbocharged engine, Head of the Promising Technologies and Development Department Kirill Kazmirchuk told TASS on Wednesday.

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"We have a range of engines in the product range of the ‘single modular platform’ project [the Cortege project]. The most powerful engine, the V-12, has a capacity of 850 hp, the V8 has 650 hp and the straight-four-cylinder engine has 250 hp. The V12, the most powerful motor, will be mounted on limousines - on the light and the ‘heavy’ version, i.e. on the protected limousine," he said.

According to Kazmirchuk, the V8 and V12 engines will be mounted on SUV (off-road) vehicles while the V4 and V8 will be installed in the minivan. The NAMI institute has developed the V8 engine together with Porsche Engineering while the other two motors are the institute’s homegrown inventions, he noted.

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Only one gearbox, a nine-gear automatic transmission, has been developed for the project so far. It is not ruled out that simpler gearboxes will appear in the future, in particular, for the V4 engine, he said.

This motorcade project for building a family of cars for top officials - a limousine, a sedan, an off-road vehicle and a minivan. The limousine is expected to be unveiled at the president’s inauguration in the spring of 2018. After the vehicles are ready in all of their modifications for government officials, they will be freely sold on the market.

The engine, the gearbox, exterior and interior elements will be customized, he emphasized.

Anti-Russian sanctions

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