Mercedes-Benz chief executive Ola Källenius has acknowledged that the car manufacturer’s supervisory board must have been “drunk” when they decided to approve the AMG One hypercar for production.
The German car manufacturer first unveiled the car at the Frankfurt Auto Show in 2017. It made headlines because it features a Formula One-derived hybrid powertrain using a 1.6-liter turbocharged V6, a motor-generator unit-kinetic motor, a motor-generator unit-head motor, and two electric motors at the front axle. All up, the car is expected to have over 1,000 hp.
While these specifications all sound great on paper, actually bringing the AMG One to the road has proven to be extremely difficult. It has been delayed on numerous occasions and customer deliveries have yet to begin.
Read More: Production Of The Mercedes-AMG One Hypercar Set To Begin In Mid-2022
“The team at AMG and the [AMG] High Performance Powertrain Formula 1 arm came to us about four years ago and said ‘we’ve got a great idea, let’s put a Formula 1 engine into a road car’,’ Källenius told Autocar in a recent interview. “I will have to go back to check the meeting minutes, but I’m sure we were drunk when we said yes.”
One issue that Mercedes has had to overcome was getting the powertrain to comply with WLTP emissions standards that require the use of a petrol particulate filter.
While speaking with members of the media about the car in Monaco, Källenius added that the automaker has news about the AMG One to announce “in a couple of weeks.” The carmaker’s head of marketing, Bettina Fetzer, also told Autocar that Mercedes will share a “very honest documentary” about the progress of the project.
Just 275 examples of the Mercedes-AMG One are bound for production with each commanding a price tag of approximately €2.27 million ($2.4 million).
