September 11, 2017: that’s when we first laid eyes on the Mercedes-AMG Project One concept at the Frankfurt motor show, with power coming from a bona fide, championship-winning F1 engine.
Except it turns out that sticking the most successful engine the sport has ever known into a road-going car for mere mortals is, um, quite hard. Which is why it’s taken almost five years (1,794 days to be exact) to get to the stage where production can finally begin.
For context, there were 2,974 days between JFK's famous 'We choose to go to the Moon' speech and Neil Armstrong's even more famous 'It's one small step for man' quote. What we can discern from this is that making an F1 powertrain work in a car with indicators is more than half as hard as landing on the Moon.
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Anyway, this is where we’re at: assembly on the first of 275 AMG Ones has started at a small series production facility in Coventry, with Merc enlisting the help of Multimatic to bring the 1.6-liter V6 turbo, quad e-motor powered hypercar to life.
And the all-important numbers you’ve been waiting for: 11.5 km/L and 198g/km, plus battery efficiency of 3 kilometers per kilowatt-hour.
Only kidding. The production-spec AMG One wrings 1,049hp from that F1 powertrain, with 0-100 kph taken care of in 2.9secs, 0-200 kph in seven seconds flat, and 0-300 kph in 15.6secs. Top speed is 352 kph. Tips the scales at 1,695kg.
According to Mercedes a total of 50 specialists work on each car (you can see their handiwork for yourself in the gallery above), with final testing taking place at a nearby proving ground at the hands of a factory driver.
The One is then shipped off to AMG’s Affalterbach base in Germany for a ‘technical vehicle briefing’ (not something you get on, say, a Suzuki S-Presso) before the keys are handed over to customers.
The first deliveries will take place in the second half of this year. Now we just need to line up an Aston Martin Valkyrie for the least quaint twin test in history.
Note: This story first appeared in TopGear.com. Some edits have been made.
