A hypercar...
Confirmation came in Paris, in the form of a silhouette picture on the wall and a bold admission from Professor Thomas Weber, 'Benz's Member of the Board responsible for Group Research, that AMG will produce a 'hypercar'. It's been rumoured for while now, but now AMG is admitting it'll happen, and tapping up its colleagues in its Formula One departments in Brackley and Brixworth to make it so. Power will be from the Mercedes-AMG's F1 car, which means a 1.6-litre V6 that is turbocharged and hybrid assisted. It'll be the first time an F1 unit has been put in a road car since Ferrari put a heavily revised V10 in the back of the F50.
1,000hp, F1 tech, bring it on...
Not just any road car either, promises Tobias Moers, AMG's boss, but a game-changer. A chat with Moers revealed a power figure in the region of 1,000hp driving via a four-wheel drive system fitted to a carbon composite structure. Moers confirmed that the project is still in the virtual prototyping stages, and suggests that real world prototypes will be running within a year. He's bullish about the project, too, saying it'll better any rival's Nürburgring lap time, relishing the challenges that packaging and, crucially, cooling an F1 powerplant in a road car presents.
Phone a friend.
Moers says the decision to proceed with the ambitious project was taken a little over a year ago, when he telephoned his colleague Andy Cowell, Managing Director, Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains, at Mercedes-AMG Petronas. With F1 titles to celebrate, as well as AMG's forthcoming 50th anniversary, the time seemed right. Moers also says that customers were pushing AMG to produce a rival for cars like Porsche's 918 Spyder, the McLaren P1, Ferrari LaFerrari and Aston Martin's recently announced - and conceptually similar - AM-RB 001 hypercar collaboration with Red Bull Racing.
How many, how much and when?
Moers won't be drawn on production numbers, nor potential pricing as yet, though given the nature of these things it'll be a case of too little to satisfy the growing market for such wild machines; pick a number between one and five followed by six zeros. Talk of outside help has been denied, AMG instead planning to use the combined engineering clout of its two British F1 bases as well as its Affalterbach home. We'll get more of a clue about how it might look next year, Moers saying AMG will show a concept at a motor show in 2017, with production cars anticipated by 2019. Moers describes AMG's hypercar very much as the 'next step,' opening the door to the inevitable hybridisation of AMG cars, and if it lives up to what AMG is promising then bring on the future...
Kyle Fortune - 4 Oct 2016