Paris Motor Show: Mercedes confirms plans for F1 engined supercar

Mercedes has dramatically confirmed that it will make a mid-engined hypercar to cash in on its enormous success in recent years in Formula One. The announcement came on the eve of the Paris motor show, and the move puts Mercedes into direct competition with the recently-announced Aston Martin Red Bull project. The twist is that Mercedes owns a chunk of Aston Martin…

Mercedes is giving no technical details on the project just yet, but it will be of all-carbon-fibre construction and will use an engine at least based on the 1.6-litre V6 hybrid engine used in the W07 Mercedes-AMG F1 cars by Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. The car will be built in strictly limited numbers and will more than likely cost north of €4-million each. Mercedes' in house high performance arm, AMG, will lead the car's development and it's rumoured that sports car maker Lotus will be involved in some of the chassis tuning.

Aston Martin and Red Bull announced earlier this year that it would collaborate on a similar mid-engined hypercar, with a seven-figure price tag – a market that now appears suddenly more crowded.

Confirming the car's existence to the assembled journalists, Mercedes' head of research and development Prof. Thomas Weber said that "I am very excited to officially confirm: our next big thing at AMG is already in the pipeline. We are going to create an AMG Performance Hybrid featuring our Formula 1 drivetrain technology. Under the lead of AMG, our performance companies will join forces and create the most efficient and, at the same time, the best performing and most spectacular AMG of all time – some might even call it a hypercar. But no matter what you call it – it will definitely show how we will take our performance brand into the future with extremely efficient and intelligent drive train technology. Of course, as you can expect from us, there will be no compromises in terms of the emotion appeal of this car."