The AM Rina is a lightweight Italian speedster with a 500bhp American V8

It's been a good week or so for the manual gearbox. Just a few days ago we discovered the Yugo was making a comeback as a small, affordable hatchback with a dinky petrol engine and a DIY gearbox. Exactly as a Yugo should be.

Here’s another new manual motor, although this one won’t be quite as affordable, and its engine is a little more… substantial. What you’re looking at is the Automobili Mignatta (or AM for short) Rina. And no, the name isn’t supposed to be a nautical nod to Riva – we’re told it was inspired by the founder of AM’s grandmother, Caterina.

Quite the tribute, too. It’s a carbon-tubbed speedster that’ll be handbuilt in Piedmont and celebrates the Italian sportscars of the 1960s. Looks rather special too with its long bonnet, individual aeroscreens and protruding roll hoops.

Oh, and that engine. Like lots of niche Italian supercars of the past, the Rina uses a proper naturally aspirated American V8. AM doesn’t explicitly say this, but it’s fairly obvious that it’s the 5.0-litre Coyote engine from a Ford Mustang connected to a six-speed manual gearbox and a limited slip diff. The engine isn’t just plugged straight into that Kevlar-reinforced carbon monocoque though, it’s first sent to Italtecnica Engineering for tuning and there’s a bespoke exhaust system to ensure it sounds mighty.

We’re told “maximum power and torque values will be made official at a later date”, but AM has said it’s aiming for a 1,000kg kerbweight and that it’ll have one bhp for every two kilos of mass. Yep, that sounds like a 500bhp V8 to us then. Rear-wheel drive, too, with carbon ceramic brakes optional and 19/20in wheels front and rear. Excellent.

Just 30 of these will be built each year, and the ‘interior’ features no infotainment at all. Probably wise not to ask the driver to jab at a touchscreen while piloting a windscreenless muscle car. Instead, you get leather-clad seats bolted directly to the chassis, elliptical dials, lots of aluminium and even more exposed carbon. There’s even a special spot inside the door panel to store your helmet.

“Rina is proudly linked to Piedmont, the homeland of many milestones in the international automotive industry,” says AM founder Josè Mignatta. “It is a sports car that celebrates Italian style and conveys the feeling of driving ‘for real’, perhaps on the hills of Monferrato or the Langhe, enjoying the evocative Piedmontese landscapes and the inebriating sound of its powerful V8 engine.

"With Rina we aspire to make the art of making cars coincide with pure grace, creating a beauty characterised by noble simplicity and quiet grandeur.”