Teaser reveals first angled look at the highly-anticipated Porsche 918-fighter

Mercedes-AMG has been relatively coy on details pertaining to its much talked about hypercar project. In fact, apart from AMG boss Tobias Moers confirming the project and a relatively indistinct teaser photo, not much is known about this mysterious model. We know it’s going to be a hypercar and we know that it’s going to be powered by a similar drivetrain that was used by Mercedes’ championship-winning Formula One team. But beyond these bits and pieces of information, the hypercar remains a mystery.

Fortunately, Mercedes-AMG was kind enough to shed new light on the car in the form of a new teaser image that was shown at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show and caught by our friends over at GT Spirit.

The teaser actually doesn’t amount to much (again), but it does contain a lot more information about the car compared to the broad-stroked sketch that Mercedes-AMG first showed at the 2016 Paris Motor Show last October. The biggest takeaway from this new teaser image is the cross-section shape of the hypercar. Turns out, Mercedes-AMG is preparing the car to look less like an “traditional” hypercar and more like an actual racer. Now that might not end up being the case in the end, but this teaser image does show some obvious racing elements.

The shape of the roof, for instance, suggests that the car is either going to have a closed cockpit or that it’s designed the car to feature gullwing doors. Maybe both styling cues will appear in the car. That’s a possibility too, albeit one that I’m not prepared to jump into at the moment. Another design element worth mentioning are the two large NACA ducts that were put there to feed cool air into the engine bay, which we already know will house an actual Formula One engine. And in case anybody’s wondering what that vertical bar is in the middle, that’s actually the Le Mans-style central fin that we first saw in the original teaser sketch of the car back in Paris. Last but certainly not least are the massive rear haunches that suggests that the hypercar will be sitting really close to the ground it hits the road in 2018.

Even with the teaser – and it is a better one compared to the first teaser – revealing some significant styling cues of the Mercedes-AMG hypercar, it’s going to be difficult to specifically pinpoint which of these designs will make their way into the final product. Ultimately though, the worth of this teaser image shouldn’t be based on what it’s showing us. It’s worth is grounded on the simple reminder from Mercedes-AMG that its hypercar is coming, and it’s arriving sooner than later.

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