116 Esquire — June 2018
it’s gauche to start with numbers, but
when we're referring to a £1.95m hypercar,
we’re not going to start with the colour of
the seat belts, are we? (But we’ll get to that.)
So let’s talk numbers: the Mercedes-AMG
Project One, the carmaker’s first foray into the
ultra-luxe stratosphere of insanely fast hyper-
cars that includes the Bugatti Chiron, Aston
Martin Valyrie and Pagani Zonda, produces
a planet-moving 1,000bhp. It can go from
0–124mph in less time than it takes to read
this sentence. (Six seconds.) It’s powered by
a 1.6-litre V6 (and four electric motors) that
screeches up to 11,000rpm. (Your average
Honda Civic gets up to a mere 5,500rpm. he
Ferrari Superfast, 8,500.) It is a plug-in hybrid,
with an all-electric range of about 15 miles.
But you want real exclusivity? Only 275
examples of what is ostensibly a street legal
Formula One car — the first prototype con-
tained the same engine Lewis Hamilton uses —
will be made. Mercedes-AMG allocated 20 for
Britain, and 55 to the US where all of them have
been spoken for. (Just a few buyers are women,
in case you were wondering which gender is
still overcompensating for something.)
As is becoming the norm with hypercars,
you couldn’t just write a cheque to buy the
Project One. You needed to apply. Mercedes-
Benz received around 1,100 approaches world-
wide. The ultimate decision of who received
the privilege to plunk down the cost of a very
nice Knightsbridge pied-à-terre on a vehi-
cle came down to AMG CEO Tobias Moers
and Dietmar Exler, the president and CEO of
Mercedes-Benz USA.What separated one billionaire from
the next? The things taken into considera-
tion were a lot like the criteria Ford GT buy-
ers were subject to when applying to purchase
the American company’s otherworldly super-
car: a large social media following helped, as
did the sense that you were going to actually
drive the car and display it at events as opposed
to flipping it or, worse, mothballing it within
your hangar of bespoke vehicles. But the initial
barrier before even being considered for Club
Project One? You must have owned at least 20
Mercedes-Benzes in your lifetime.
“It was a very difficult conversation to
have with the customer who [had] owned
18 Mercedes,” says Heiko Schmidt, head of
AMG North America.
Just had to buy that Lexus in ’03, didn’t you?From let: the Mercedes-Benz star is painted on the hood to avoid air turbulence and
lower the drag efect; similarly, the headlights are integrated flush into the front arch;
the spare F-syle driving position is stacked with high-tech monitors and controls