It’s been a little over four years since Mercedes and AMG first revealed the Project One – a daring hypercar whose goal was to blend F1 performance and technology with the simple phrase “road capable.” As easy as that sounds, there’s a reason we’ve had to wait so long for the original Project One to become a reality – it wasn’t so easy after all. For six months after its unveiling, Mercedes was balls to the wall when it came to sharing insight about development and goals, even claiming that the One was going to be the fastest car to ever grace the Nürburgring. But, this is where fairy tales become nightmares, and both Mercedes and AMG finally got a taste of just how hard it is to build a true F1 car for the road.

Delays and More Delays – the AMG One Has Felt Like A Lost Cause

Six months after announcing the Project One’s goal of decimating the Nürburgring and every car that’s ever ventured onto it, it finally received a name. The Project one simply became the AMG One. But, here comes the trouble because a month after that, the AMG One was delayed until 2020. This delay stemed from AMG’s inability to adapt that F1 engine for road use while still complying with WLTP standards. Reportedly, there was also an issue with keeping the engine’s idle speed, which is some 5,000 rpm in race spec at a respectable – and smooth – 1,200 rpm.

As time went on, Mercedes and AMG released bits of information to keep the public interested, and by September 2019, we finally got to hear the AMG One in action. It actually sounded a lot like a spaceship. Suddenly, a month later, the AMG One was delayed until 2021, something that was supposedly necessary for the same reasons as before – cost of development and difficulty making an F1 engine road worthy. Well, guess what? We’re now in the fourth-quarter of 2021 and we still don’t see the AMG One in production.

Mercedes and AMG didn’t give up, though, as a new report from Autocar claims that the AMG One will actually entry production in 2022, some five years after we first laid eyes on the official concept. As of now, nothing else has changed. Mercedes-AMG will still build just 275 examples, each and every one of which has already been sold for some €2.27 million – about $2.6 million at current exchange rates. The One should still deliver as much as 1,200 horsepower, offer up to as much as 16 miles of all-electric range, and should top out at around 218 mph, 124 mph of which will come in just six seconds from a dead stop.

At this point, we’re really curious to see if the One really does enter production in 2022 and, when it does, if it’ll be able to match the specs from the concept that I’ve listed above. And, just how long will it take to build all 275 units? I sure wouldn’t want to be at the bottom of that list.

Mercedes-AMG one specifications