New 1000hp+ AMG Hybrid Hypercar In The Works?

It is no secret that Mercedes-Benz's new flagship sports car, the AMG GT, is aimed squarely at the Porsche 911. The price, power, speed, and even the shape of the AMG GT are all similar to that of 911. However, AMG might have another Porsche competitor in the works, but this time they have their sights set at the top of the Porsche line-up, the 918 Spyder. Recently, Motor Trend sat down to talk with AMG CEO Tobias Moers at the Detroit Auto Show and some interesting information came out of it.

Last year, Motor Trend's Senior Features Editor Johnny Lieberman flat out asked AMG's Moers if they were going to make a car to compete in the ultra-exclusive hybrid hypercar segment that is currently made up of the Porsche 918 Spyder, McLaren P1, and the Ferrari LaFerrari. Moer's response was a straight up "no". However, when Lieberman posed the same question to the AMG boss at the 2015 Detroit Auto Show, his response this time was worth speculating on: "We want to be seen by the public on the same level as the other sports car maker in Germany."

Without naming names, the "other sports car maker in Germany" is obviously Porsche. Moer's diplomatic response to the question has led us to speculate that AMG has indeed at least thought of the idea of competing in the hybrid hypercar market. Mercedes will most likely use a more powerful version of their all-new 4.0L twin turbo V8, which produces 510 hp in the AMG GT S. It is speculated that this engine will be tuned to make 650-700 hp in their new hypercar.

Digging deeper, AMG already has done some development on hybrid powertrains for sporty applications. The SLS electric drive that AMG developed put out 740 hp from 4 electric motors powering each wheel individually. Assuming that AMG uses a similar motors and set up for the front axle, we could be potentially seeing 370 hp powering the front axle and close to 700 hp powering the rear axle for a grand total of over 1000 hp from the hybrid powertrain. This will put it near, or at the top, in terms of power output from the current 3 hybrid hypercars.

In terms of layout and design, it will most likely be mid-engined for packaging purposes. The current FR layout of the AMG GT does not have the flexibility to convert it into an AWD set up, especially one with a hybrid system on board. The people over at Topspeed.com have done some rendering of what they think the new AMG flagship will look like. We have posted the renderings below.

For now this is all speculation of what is to really come from the crazy engineers over in Affalterbach. All we know is that something really exciting is going to be arriving from AMG in the not-so-distant future.