We still don’t know what the Mercedes-AMG hypercar will look like, but we’re slowly learning more about its impressive features — a Formula One powertrain, a supposed 1,000 horsepower and an engine that revs to 11,000 RPM. But guess what! For the mere $4 million it costs, the engine will only last 50,000km.
Image via Mercedes-AMG.com
According to Top Gear, Mercedes-AMG boss Tobias Moers said the car, named the “Project One,” will cost £2.37 million including tax. At the current exchange rates, the car will be nearly $4 million once it goes on sale and will be on the streets by 2019. The manufacturer will only make 275 of them, and we should see the car at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September.
Here’s the fun — and kind of funny — part. The Project One hypercar’s 1.6-litre turbo V6 engine and four electric motors, which Moers told Autocar will power each of the front wheels, the crankshaft and the engine turbocharger, will only last 50,000km before needing a rework or a replacement. At least, that’s what Motoring says Moers told them.
Expensive stuff, that is.
But when you think about it, 50,000km don’t get put on these kinds of cars often. Plus, it’s not like every manufacturer jumps at the chance to tell people how long its performance engines last for comparison.
So, with the internet unable to give us an answer on how long comparable cars last and manufacturer representatives out of office for the Geneva Motor Show, we got creative and called up a McLaren service advisor at a U.S. dealership to ask about the engine life on the McLaren P1.
The service advisor told us that he’s seen P1 customer cars that are nearly four years old, and that they usually only have 4,000 to 5,000 miles on them since the hybrid supercar isn’t exactly a daily driver. He’s seen the odometers get up to 10,000 miles, all with no engine problems.
He did say that he’s seen McLaren 12Cs with upwards of 40,000 to 50,000 miles in the dealership, also without engine problems. For comparison to the Project One, the 12C was McLaren’s supercar for the regular wealthy rather than the super rich, at around $400,000. It came with a race-inspired 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8, and it wasn’t nearly the level of fancy this Mercedes hypercar should be.
But still, an engine replacement at 50,000km is just plain frightening for the common folk on this earth. We’re not the biggest fans of people who let their stupid-expensive performance cars sit in the garage every day, but at this cost, can we really blame them?
Update, March 11, 2017 at 5:30 p.m. ET: A McLaren spokesperson got back to us about the engine life on a car like the hybrid McLaren P1 supercar, which has a twin-turbo V8 alongside its electric motor and sells for well over $2 million.
The McLaren spokesperson says the company doesn’t have specific records on engine life of the P1, but that there’s a P1 that belonged to the McLaren press fleet while the car was still being manufactured.
The car, McLaren says, has over 50,000 “seriously abusive” miles on it — and the “seriously abusive” part can definitely be expected from a press car — and that it is still “going strong with no major engine work beyond regular services.”