Esquire — June 2018 117
(Hypercar buyers, as one can surmise,
live in a rarefied world. Schmidt says AMG
poached one of its main liaisons for Project
One customers from Porsche because of her
experience with the clientele who purchased
its pioneering hybrid hypercar, the 918.)
Much of the Project One can be custom-
ised, with the exception of the seat belts,
because of safety regulations. (You’ll still be
able to choose from a set of colours, however.)
Deliveries aren’t until 2019; until then, the
lucy 275 will be treated to custom seat fitings
(the two seats are built into the carbon-fibre
monocoque to save weight, but the pedals will
be adjustable), get a look at their engine being
hand-assembled, take rides in proper F1 cars,
and receive special training in how to han-
dle a 1,000bhp land rocket. It will be the first
consumer Mercedes-Benz built in Brackley
and Brixworth, England, where the cars for the
company’s F1 team are manufactured.
Based on numbers alone, it’s easy to dis-
miss the Project One as just another billion-
aire’s plaything, but it’s bigger than that. For
one, its appearance is more classic than the
angry, angular look that seems to be the prev-
alent design language for many million-
dollar-plus automobiles these days, as if one of
Michael Bay’s Transformers were trapped half-
way between car and robot. Sure, it has thin,
mean eyes and a menacing shark-ish fin, but it
still has curves. It still elicits that old-school,
sensual feeling of yearning.
“It’s similar to Stirling Moss’s SLRs in
the Fifties,” Gorden Wagener, Mercedes’
chief design officer, tells Esquire duringa walk-through of the car, pointing out how
the shoulder line is at wheel level on both vehi-
cles. “We didn’t want it to look like a hypercar.”
Secondly, the technology that drives the
Project One won’t simply be for the 0.0001
per cent. he goal, at least initially, is for the
innovative hybrid tech that is able to squeeze
out enormous amounts of power from a rela-
tively small engine to make its way into other
Mercedes-Benz sports cars. Albeit maybe more
for the one per cent at first.
It makes you root for these machines, even
though most of us will never drive one. For the
überwealthy, hypercars present a burgeoning
investment opportuniy. For everyone else, and
the big companies that make them, they are an
investment in keeping cars exciting to drive
until the day autonomous cars drive us.Mercedes-AMG Project One
Engine 3.85-litre V8 twin-turbo
Power 592bhp
0–62mph 3.5 secs
Top speed 199mph
Economy 26.9mpg
Price From £166,180