Putting an actual F1 engine in a street-legal hypercar was no easy feat for Mercedes-AMG, but they finally did it. The One hypercar was introduced in September 2017, and after many engineering hurdles, production started in August 2022. F1 champion Nico Rosberg ordered his in 2018 but had to wait six years to collect the car. A new video reminds us just how finicky this F1 car for the road really is.
You've probably heard the story about how the turbocharged 1.6-liter V-6 has to be rebuilt once every 31,000 miles. Well, there's more to it than that since the AMG One's startup procedure must be obeyed to the letter. Nico Rosberg made the mistake of shutting off the car prematurely before the engine reached its optimal temperature.
Had he done this six times in a row, Mercedes would have bricked the car, preventing him from using it again. Then what? A One owner would have to ring up Mercedes and ask someone from AMG to come with a laptop and unfreeze the car. Talk about first-world problems...
It takes 5-8 minutes for the combustion engine to reach optimal temperature if the car is stationary. Driving it around lowers the wait time to 2-5 minutes. It's worth noting the hypercar always starts in fully electric mode. The ICE doesn't kick in until the catalytic converter reaches 932°F, a process that takes anywhere from 60 to 90 seconds. During this time, the AMG One effectively behaves like an EV.
Once the combustion engine comes alive, the fastest production car around the Nürburgring becomes impressively loud. So much so that Mercedes-AMG delivers the hypercar with noise-canceling headphones because some might find the 120 decibels overwhelming. It was even louder during the development process but the engineers eventually managed to make it slightly more civilized. There's no fake engine sound being pumped through the speakers. It's all mechanical.
Mercedes-AMG CTO Jochen Hermann told Rosberg that getting the software right was the most challenging part of the lengthy development process. From previous statements made by company representatives, we learned that lowering the engine's idle speed from the F1 car's 5,000 rpm to 1,250 rpm was also a huge undertaking.
Hermann admitted the AMG One was the most complicated car to develop in the history of Mercedes and he believes it will never be replicated. The German brand has already ruled out doing another F1-powered road car ever again due to stricter emissions regulations. Only 275 units of the AMG One are being hand-built and Nico Rosberg is not the only F1 driver who signed his name on the dotted line. David Coulthard is also on the list.
As if the AMG One wasn't special enough already, Nico's has a black three-pointed star at the front that took 16 layers of paint, all of which were applied by hand.
