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Mercedes' $2.8 Million Hypercar Gets Huge Power From a Tiny Engine

We don’t know a whole lot about the Project One. We have no idea how fast it will go, or how quickly it will reach 60 or 125 mph from a standstill. We have only a vague sense of what the thing looks like, formed by adding wishful thinking to annoyingly vague teaser images. We don’t even know when we’ll know more.

Of course, expectations are high for a car that will cost roughly $2.8 million (to start) and represents Mercedes-Benz’s bid to join the elite club of ‘hypercars.’ Developed by Merc’s in-house go-fast division, AMG, and slated to go on sale in 2019, the Project One will rival million-dollar vehicles like the forthcoming Aston Martin Valkyrie, McLaren BP23, and Ferrari LaFerrari Aperta.

And this week, we learned how Mercedes expects to do it, when AMG chief Tobias Moers shared details on the heart of the Project One: its powertrain and suspension setup.

Mercedes’ engineers couldn’t just stuff the biggest engine they could find under the hood, cover everything in carbon fiber, and call it good. Summiting this automotive peak takes brawn, sure, but brains are more important. So for help, the AMG engineers borrowed a pile of tech from the company’s uber-successful Formula 1 team.

Brainiac

The Project One gets most of its oomph from a turbocharged 1.6-liter V6 engine. That may seem minuscule for this sort of use case, but consider that this machine is a close cousin to the one that powered the car Lewis Hamilton drove to an F1 championship in 2015. Of course, some accommodations had to be made.

Many of these changes have to do with how, and how high, the engine revs. The engine in an “ordinary” Mercedes sports car, say the $158,000 AMG GTR, is sized and tuned to make max power around 6,500 rpm. This limits heat and wear, allows for slightly greater tolerances in internal equipment, heightens longevity, and limits vibration.

A Formula One racecar will more than double that number, reaching about 13,500 rpm, and the Project One’s engine is a lot closer to that primal scream than to the roar of the GTR. The small, free-spinning motor will redline at an outrageous 11,000 rpm. (Where the F1 car idles around 4,000 rpm, the hypercar will rest at a more reasonable 1,200.) As in the racecar, a manually shiftable eight-speed automatic transmission sends power to the rear wheels.

That lets the little engine crank out 700 horsepower, more than you’ll ever need but not nearly enough to justify that $2.8 million price tag. Especially not when you consider that the $85,000 Dodge Demon makes more than 800 hp and does wheelies. To make up the difference, Mercedes engineers equipped each front wheel with a battery-powered motor good for 161 hp.

That pushes the total above 1,000 horses. More importantly, it enables torque vectoring, when the computer spins one wheel faster or slower than another, providing superior handling and grip in corners. (It’s physics!) A third electric motor keeps the turbocharger spinning at full tilt, promising instantaneous power by quashing turbo lag.

The Project One can even drive on nothing but electricity, using the front wheel motors and a battery pack that sits under the feet of the driver and passenger and is powered by regenerative braking. You won’t go more than 20 miles, but if you really need to avoid that extra charge on gas-burning cars, it’s a handy feature.

Staying Grounded

All that power presents another quandary: How to keep the svelte, 2,750 Project One on the ground. The engineers’ solutions include a suspension system that lowers the car’s ride height significantly at speed and when the driver selects performance-oriented race mode, to limit lift. And there’s a good chance the so far unseen Project One body could be clad in aerodynamic aids that will generate enough downforce to keep the tires stuck to the asphalt on the straightaways, without sacrificing speed in the corners.

One thing you don’t get in this new halo car: The company’s much-touted suite of driver-assistance technologies. While plenty of Mercedes sedans can now even drive themselves (in limited circumstances, with human supervision), anyone behind the wheel of the Project One is fully in charge at all times. Seems like an OK deal.

Of course, none of this comes cheap, and the $2.8 million base price is just the start. Mercedes suggests the major powertrain elements may need replacing as often as every 30,000 miles, or about as much as the average American drives every two years.

But the lucky 275 buyers likely won’t be using the Project One for the daily commute to the factories and countries they own. And even if they do, it’s not like their accountants will worry about them spending a few hundred thousand more, especially if it keeps them happy until the next, best hypercar comes along.