Mercedes E63 AMGs will race in Australia's V8 Supercar series next season, Holden debuts new Commodore race car

Ford and Holden have, just the two of them, been holding down the V8 Supercars fort for years now. The introduction of the Car of the Future regulations, which puts carmaker body panels on top of a generic chassis, induced Nissan Australia to join the party in 2013 with four of its Altima sedans. Chrysler Group Australia recently said it would not be lining up. So did Mercedes-Benz Australia, but an acquisition and an international agreement between Erebus Motorsports, Stone Brothers Racing and AMG's Customer Sports Program run by HWA means E63 AMGs will be on the starting line for the first race of 2013.

SBR has been in V8SC since 1998, the entire time with Ford, and won three championships with The Blue Oval, while Erebus runs SLS AMG GT3 coupes in the Australian GT Championship. Erebus bought SBR and its two licenses and grandfathered the rights to the third license that SBR has a lease on, then worked out a deal with AMG to get factory support. That support will come via HWA, the company run by AMG co-founder Hans Werner Aufrecht, that also preps Mercedes DTM cars.

As with Nissan, which shrunk the displacement of its Nissan Motorsport VK56DE V8 from 5.6 liters to 5.0 liters to satisfy V8SC regs, the E63 AMG motor will be a 5.0-liter iteration of the 6.2-liter V8 from Erebus' SLS AMG GT3 racer. Final parity spec for the AMG engine is still being sorted out with the governing body, and even though other makers' cars have been unveiled and on the track, the AMG engine still hasn't made it to the dyno. Even so, the privately funded team has been provided the necessary millions to make it to the starting gate by Erebus owner Betty Klimenko, and SBR has proved that it knows how to build a car.

Swallowed up in all the changes coming to the sport had been Holden, but not anymore. The Holden Racing Team took the hullabaloo of the Erebus-SBR as an excuse to unveil its new matte black and gold Commodore, and you can watch the covers pulled back in the video below.