There have been attempts at making Formula 1 cars for the road. The F50 comes to mind, a street-legal Prancing Horse gifted with Formula 1-derived V12 muscle. A couple of decades later, Mercedes-AMG took on this incredible challenge by shoehorning an F1 hybrid PU in the ONE.
Codenamed R50 and originally known as Project One, the plug-in hypercar is assembled in Brackley and the 1.6-liter turbo V6 hybrid power unit is manufactured in Brixworth alongside the Formula 1-spec V6 power unit.
A two-door coupe with butterfly-opening doors, the ONE features two electric motors up front. An MGU-H turbocharger and an MGU-K electric motor also need to be mentioned, along with a seven-speed automated manual, an 8.4-kWh battery, and 782 kW (1,049 horsepower) combined.
Capable of 219 miles per hour (352 kilometers per hour) on full song, the corner-carving land missile is the highest-performing AMG entitled to wear license plates to date. The now-discontinued GT Black Series isn’t exactly boring either, but nevertheless, the sports coupe fails to assert dominance over the all-wheel-drive hypercar in a 1,000-meter (0.62-mile) drag race.
It's a bit of a shame given that the GT Black Series lapped the Nurburgring Nordschleife in 6:43.616 seconds, only to be dethroned by a Manthey Racing-modified Porsche 911 GT2 RS. Curiously enough, Mercedes-AMG hasn’t published the lap time for the ONE even though everyone is aware of its record-breaking capability. With a bit of luck, the closest thing to the Mercedes F1 W06 Hybrid could crack the 6:00 mark in bone-stock form.
Presented as a concept in 2017, the cover car for Forza Horizon 5 will number 275 units worldwide. Lewis Hamilton purchased two of them, gifting one to his father Anthony Hamilton. Other notable owners include Nico Rosberg, David Coulthard, Mark Wahlberg, and Manny Khoshbin.
Although not as rare, the GT Black Series is the ultimate expression of the GT thanks to wild aerodynamic features and a flat-plane crankshaft V8 based on the cross-plane crankshaft V8 of lesser siblings. In this application, the M178 makes 720 horsepower and 590 pound-foot (800 Nm).
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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