A stealthy AMG One attended this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed and tackled the course in both directions on a wet surface. Behind the wheel was five-time DTM champion and AMG brand ambassador Bernd Schneider while riding shotgun was a Youtuber who goes by the username Rana. In case that doesn’t ring a bell, he’s an avid collector of high-end cars, and unsurprisingly, he is on the 275-person list to take delivery of the F1-engined hypercar.
We can see the AMG One in some great company, joined by a Lamborghini Revuelto and a 2024 AMG GT Coupe that had a minor incident. The matte black electrified supercar sounds absolutely amazing – especially in race mode – despite having a small 1.6-liter V6. Of course, it’s not just any six-cylinder engine, but one adapted from Formula 1. It has an 11,000 rpm redline and is plenty loud even when it idles at 1,250 rpm.
2023 Mercedes-AMG One
Speaking of which, the engineers had their work cut out trying to significantly lower the F1 engine’s idle speed of around 5,000 rpm to make the car pass emissions regulations. Then there are the gear shifts, which are impressively raw, delivered by a newly developed automated seven-speed manual transmission with a four-disc carbon racing clutch. The narrow Goodwood course is obviously not the most ideal area to push hard the AMG One, but even at low speeds, Mercedes’ flagship performance car is a wild beast.
The view out the windshield must be quite special when the active aero is doing its thing as we can see the louvers sticking out from the front fenders. Since there’s no rear glass, Mercedes mounted a camera at the rear. It’s located on the rear bumper, above the license plate, and is hooked up to a digital rearview mirror. The cabin is home to two additional screens – a digital instrument cluster and an infotainment – with surprisingly thick bezels for a hypercar built in 2023. That steering “wheel” looks as if it came straight from Lewis Hamilton’s car, and we can see Bernd Schneider putting the shift paddles to good use.
The fastest production car to lap the Nürburgring, the AMG One is the first and last time Mercedes is adapting a Formula 1 engine for a road-going vehicle. A follow-up has already been ruled out because of increasingly stricter emissions laws making it harder for the engineers to tweak the engine and make it comply with road car regulations. It was already a pain to make it work for the AMG One, and with the Euro 7 standard looming, it’s not going to happen again.
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