Ever wondered what happens when you blend F1 technology with a street-legal hypercar? Enter the Mercedes-AMG One, a masterpiece that’s as finicky as it is fantastic. Imagine having an actual F1 engine nestled in your daily drive—sounds thrilling, right? Well, hold your horses because there's a twist.

Unveiled in September 2017, the AMG One's journey from concept to production was no cakewalk. Production finally kicked off in August 2022, after a barrage of engineering challenges. F1 champ Nico Rosberg, who ordered his in 2018, had to wait a grueling six years to get his hands on it. But this beastly beauty comes with its quirks, as Rosberg recently found out.

You see, the AMG One’s turbocharged 1.6-liter V6 isn’t just any engine. It requires a rebuild every 50,000 kilometers. But that’s not all—its startup procedure is a ritual. If you shut off the engine prematurely before it reaches its optimal temperature, and you do this six times in a row, Mercedes will brick your car. Yes, you read that right. Your AMG One would be rendered useless until an AMG technician comes to the rescue with a laptop to unfreeze it. First-world problems, indeed.

The engine takes 5 to 8 minutes to reach its optimal temperature if the car is stationary. Drive it around, and you’re looking at a quicker 2 to 5 minutes. The hypercar always starts in full electric mode, with the internal combustion engine (ICE) kicking in only when the catalytic converter hits 500°C. This takes about 60 to 90 seconds, during which the AMG One behaves like a pure EV.

Once the combustion engine roars to life, the AMG One transforms into the fastest production car around the Nürburgring, complete with an ear-splitting 120 decibels of raw mechanical symphony. So loud, in fact, that Mercedes-AMG includes noise-canceling headphones for owners. During development, it was even louder, but engineers managed to tame it a bit—though there's no artificial engine sound piped through the speakers here; it’s all authentic.

Mercedes-AMG CTO Jochen Hermann revealed that perfecting the software was the biggest hurdle in developing the AMG One. Dropping the idle speed from the F1 car's 5,000 rpm to a more manageable 1,250 rpm was another monumental task.

Hermann admits the AMG One is the most complex car Mercedes has ever developed, and due to stringent emissions regulations, it’s likely to remain a one-off. Only 275 units are being hand-built, with Rosberg not the only F1 driver on the list; David Coulthard also secured one.

As if the AMG One’s exclusivity wasn’t enough, Rosberg’s car features a black three-pointed star at the front, painstakingly crafted with 16 layers of hand-applied paint. A fitting emblem for a hypercar that’s truly in a league of its own.