Mercedes-AMG ONE becomes first street-legal production car to have F1 engine under the hood

Marketed as the only ‘F1 supercar for the road’, the Mercedes-AMG ONE took a long time to develop – probably longer than people expected.

It was unveiled in 2017, but the first customer delivery only took place several years later.

There are a couple of reasons why this is still one of the most significant Mercedes hypercars ever built.

And this car’s rarity is only one of those reasons.

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It wasn’t smooth sailing

First introduced as Project ONE in 2017, this vehicle didn’t have the smoothest genesis in the world.

The idea was to use a semi-recent (2015) F1 engine to power a road car, but then there were no updates until 2022, when the production model, renamed ‘ONE’, was unveiled.

And then the first customer car was only delivered a year later, in 2023.

So technically this is a 2023 car with a 2015 engine.

Even so, the engine is still one of the most sophisticated ever fitted a street-legal supercar, and definitely the only ‘real’ F1 engine fitted to a modern hypercar you can use (in theory) every day.

Under the hood of the ‘ONE’, you’ll find a 1.6-liter Mercedes V6 that’s (nearly) identical to the one used by Lewis Hamilton in his F1 car back then.

It also had four electric units: a turbocharger, a KERS-like system, and two electric motors at the front.

The engine was capable of producing a grand total of 1,049 horsepower, which is a lot for a car that ‘only’ weighs 1,700 kilograms.

Several electric hypercars can do more than 1,000 horsepower, but they also weigh well over two tons.

Here’s who bought the Mercedes-AMG ONE

Lewis Hamilton used to have one, but he sold it along with all his other cars.

Nico Rosberg still owns one, as does Mercedes boss Toto Wolff.

George Russell, who’s still racing for Mercedes, also owns one.

Mercedes built 275 in total, priced at $2.72 million when they were new.

And we all know what that means.

It’s a rare car, and you couldn’t buy it anyway unless Mercedes wanted you to.

With that in mind, its value can only go up.