When your plan is to take a powertrain from Formula 1 and adapt it for road-car use, there are bound to be hurdles. Mercedes-AMG is experiencing this with its bonkers One hypercar. According to a story in Road & Track, the F1-derived engine likes to idle at 5,000 rpm and that is less than ideal for the purposes of emissions.
The goal is to have the car idle happily at 1,200 rpm but down there the engine isn’t comfortable. It’s breaking up. It’s not stable. This is, after all, an AMG Petronas turbo V6 normally ripping down a race track as the revs soar over 10,000 rpm and onward towards 15,000 rpm.
Fret not, hypercar fans. AMG engineers have already started cranking on further engine development. This sets the project back nine months from its initial delivery estimate, but AMG’s top brass say the car is once again moving forward.
It should be ready for arrival some time in the second half of 2020.
Mercedes-AMG had to pump the brakes on its One hypercar… because it idles at 5,000 rpm
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15 responses to “Mercedes-AMG had to pump the brakes on its One hypercar… because it idles at 5,000 rpm”
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It should be ready for arrival some time in the second half of 2020.
I don’t like delays and have now diverted my allocated funds towards purchasing a bunch of MPM Erelis for my housekeepers.-
Elio Motors and Aptera will also be bidding to fill your order.
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Magnificent crazy bastards
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“…engine likes to idle at 5,000 rpm…”
Yeah, I’ve been there. It’s most often a simple fix, like readjusting the idle screw or remembering to push in the choke. Sometimes it’s just that the carburetor linkage itself is binding somewhere. If all else fails they should try rejetting the carb, but usually it’s not necessary to go that deep.
I would say I don’t see why this should take them until the second half of 2020 to fix, but I’ve had projects like that, too…-
The engine doesn’t implement the self-ejecting function of the connecting rods at 5000 RPM, or are you talking about one that’s calibrated in revolutions per month? Or maybe Whitworth RPM?
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I’ve learned to be primed to shut off the engine quickly, which I’ve discovered is a useful response to a considerable variety of developments.
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…and German at that, so the trailing zeros would indicate a high degree of accuracy.
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Not necessarily. It may only indicate a high degree of precision.
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This is a highly advanced engine, meaning the crankshaft isn’t driven by connecting rods but by grinding wheels.
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It’s a rather modern car, so it might be a vacuum leak, too.
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I’ve had old Honda motorcycles with vacuum carbs that would spontaneously rev up to high rpm’s while waiting at a stop light. Scary, but I got used to it after several rebuilds that never fixed the problem.
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Maybe they could talk to some ex-Ferrari F50 engineers to see how they managed to street-ify a Formula 1 motor.
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Or talk to Honda about how they got the carbed, points controlled ignitioned 250 CC six of 1964 that revved to 18000 rpm to idle.
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I don’t see the problem – it’s supposed to be a HYPER car – I know when my kids get hyper they don’t idle below 5000 rpms either.
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Seems like a car begging for a stop-start system.
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