Behold, The Glorious Guts Of The Mercedes-AMG Project One

We’ve known for a while about the F1-sourced nature of the Mercedes-AMG Project One’s powertrain, but seeing it all laid out like this does leave us a little dumbstruck.

A handful of cars can claim to have loosely ‘F1-derived’ engines, but there’s no getting away from the fact that what you see here with road car wheels and tyres attached is - for all intents and purposes - a Mercedes-AMG F1 hybrid powertrain.

There are differences, of course. For starters, the 1.6-litre, turbocharged V6 revs to ‘only’ 11,000rpm as opposed to the 15,000rpm ceiling seen in F1 (it also idles at 4000rpm). Also, the unit powers all four wheels as opposed to just the rears, with a pair of electric motors (delivering 106bhp each) powering each of the front boots.

As in F1, a third, 159bhp ‘MGU-K’ motor can be found hooked directly to the crankshaft, and there’s an ‘MGU-H’ electric turbocharger.

All told, there are four times the battery cells of last year’s Mercedes-AMG F1 car, and the front motors can run on their own to give an all electric mode that’ll operate for up to 15 miles. The V6 meanwhile will be good for 31,000 miles between rebuilds.

As revealed recently, the V6 and its associated motors add up to a whopping 1006bhp output. Quite a bit less than something like a Bugatti Chiron, but the Bugatti weighs a fair bit more than the anticipated 1300kg mass of the Project One.

Just 275 will be made, sold at £2.4 million each. On the strength of what we’ve seeing so far, that doesn’t seem like such a bad deal.

Sources: Auto Express, Autoblog