When Mercedes unveiled its new AMG Formula One hypercar project, they said it would have the drivetrain from its F1 car. We were skeptical, as that would just be absurd. But Mercedes says it’s being serious – it’ll have a 1.6-liter turbo V6 screaming to over 10,000 RPM in a street-legal car.
The car will indeed use the F1 1.6-liter V6 engine, AMG boss Tobias Moers told Car and Driver:
“We’re not talking about ‘inspired by,’ it’s going to be that engine,” he said. “It’s the power pack, the batteries—it’s the most efficient engine I know of in terms of dealing with thermal losses.”
Power will probably be somewhere around a casual 1000 HP, with a 10,000 or 11,000 RPM redline. No big deal.
Meirs went on to tell Autoblog that speed numbers aren’t “something we’ll be chasing for,” which makes me laugh. Instead, dynamics and thermal engineering will be the main focus, presumably because Mercedes is a company run by German engineers and that thermal engineering dynamics are what they truly love in life. It’ll have active aero as well, and it “won’t share a platform, and that “everything is dedicated in this car, it’s all new.”
Two years is how long we have to wait before we can expect the car, with first deliveries scheduled for late 2018 or 2019. Moers went onto say that it’ll probably cost around $2,000,000, not like it matters. No one here is hunting for a bargain.
Of course, there are also huge challenges in between now and then that have to be overcome. Like how to make it street legal and daily drivable, for example. Typically, F1 engines are designed to be driven at the very top of their rev ranges. Can you imagine trying to navigate bumper to bumper traffic like that?