The Very Complicated Mercedes-AMG One Hypercar Has a Fire Problem
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What's the saying? Two's company, but three's a crowd? It appears Mercedes-Benz has decided to intervene before any more of its AMG One hypercars burn to the ground, issuing a recall in its home country to address a fire risk related to its adjustable aerodynamics system. Per Mercedes, incorrectly installed (or missing) components of the hydraulic system that controls the rear wing can lead to a fluid leak, and hydraulic fluid has a habit of bursting into flames if you even look at it funny.
The hydraulic rear wing is one of many adjustable components found on the AMG One, each of which interacts with the car's complex drive mode system. Apart from its outright performance, this song-and-dance is arguably the car's neatest party trick, and since the wing deploys based on several different parameters, it's not a simple set-and-forget feature that could be ignored by owners. Of the approximately 275 examples known to exist, 219 examples of them worldwide will have to be inspected to ensure their safe assembly.
Mercedes-Benz stopped short of publicly associating the issue with the fires that have completely consumed two examples of its Formula 1 car for the street, but then its notice really doesn't include much of anything at all apart from a brief, dry description of the potential defect. You can look it up here; just bring your browser's translate feature. If we run with the assumption that this fix is related, it obviously came too late for the owners of the two now-lost examples that we know of.
Um Mercedes-AMG ONE pegou fogo. A unidade estava no guincho, sendo rebocada no M6, em Staffordshire, quando explodiu em chamas.A Mercedes está investigando o incêndio no motor híbrido, que aconteceu quando seu motor estava desligado.
🗞️ | The Sun pic.twitter.com/6p4HLFhzut — Mercedes-AMG F1 Brasil 🇧🇷 (@MercedesAMGF1BR) May 22, 2023
The most recent AMG One self-immolation (linked above) happened on public roads in Germany, and was the first known example of a car being lost to fire in customer hands. The previous fire happened back in 2023, before many of the cars had been delivered. That car caught fire in a transporter while being moved between assembly facilities, Mercedes later confirmed. The company offered no insight as to the cause of that conflagration.
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