The troubled AMG One hypercar has given Mercedes a lot of headaches. Initially scheduled to be launched in 2019, the model has not yet reached dealerships to date due to a problem perhaps underestimated by the German automaker : adapting a power unit designed for single-seaters – in this case, Formula 1 – to a street model. The brand’s CEO himself, Ola Kallenius, joked about the launch delay last Thursday (19), during a conversation with investors, saying that he must have been “drunk” when he agreed to the project.
“About four years ago, the AMG team and their Formula 1 powertrain division came to us and said ‘we have a great idea, let’s put a Formula 1 engine in a road car’. I’ll have to go back to check the minutes of the meeting, but I’m sure we were drunk when we said yes”, joked Kallenius, when asked about the launch date of the hypercar.
The Mercedes AMG One uses a V6 1.6 hybrid adapted from the car that won the Formula 1 Constructors’ World Championship in 2017. With all-wheel drive, it was originally scheduled for early 2019. For now, it remains without a set release date – although the company says it will reveal news about the model “in a few weeks.” Boasting 1,000 horsepower, the car reaches a top speed of 350 km/h and accelerates from 0 to 200 km/h in just 6 seconds.
Documentary will show history of the project
Mercedes is also promising to release a “very honest” documentary on progress in the hypercar, as announced by marketing director Bettina Fetzer at the same investor event in Monaco.
The German automaker must be inspired by the successful series ‘Drive to Survive’, the Formula 1 reality show on Netflix , to close the film. The executives are betting on an approach that shows the difficult task of adapting a single-seater engine to a street car, probably to soften the tight skirt of delay in the launch and the brand image.
Last year, Mercedes said that production of the 275 units of the AMG One would start in 2022 and that each of them had been sold for a price of 2.27 million euros (around R$ 11.6 million). According to Kallenius, this will be a way of connecting the company’s activities in Formula 1 with its road cars. “This demonstrates that our involvement with Formula 1 has a direct effect on the AMG brand,” he stressed.
