Top Gear’s Top 9: Formula One cars for the road

Catchy name, huh? In fairness, most great F1 cars pinched names from dishwashers (MP4/4, FW16, W09 EQ Power+, I could go on).

Like most ‘F1 cars for the road’, the OX99 came about as a sort of road-going billboard for a company’s F1 efforts. Yamaha was supplying F1 engines back in 1989, so by 1992 it wanted to make a street car to celebrate that fact. The tandem centre-seat OX99 was basically a wing, a steering wheel, and a 6.0-litre, 400bhp V12 that revved to over 10,000rpm.

The noise was biblical. So were the development costs, and due to a recession in its homeland, what could have been Japan’s first hypercar was shelved with only three prototypes produced.

The most single-minded, gloriously-selfish sports car made today is the sublime Briggs Automotive Company Mono. The spec sheet reads something like this: one seat, side-pod air intakes, and a steering wheel with colour-coded buttons, teeny paddleshifters and one of the coolest instrument displays in all of motoring.

Slap on a wing and some oil giant sponsorship and it'd look ready for the Monaco grid. Bet you’d keep up with this year’s Williams…

Uglier and slower than the iconic F40, for a while history wasn’t kind to the Ferrari F50. But, as those radical Nineties lines look classical with every passing year, and we come to appreciate the lunacy of its F1-derived engine, it’s having its moment in the sun.

In case you’re not aware, the 4.7-litre V12 in the back of the F50 shared its basic block with the 3.5-litre V12 Ferrari used in the 641 F1 car, five years before the F50’s birth. Rear suspension was bolted directly to the engine block, too. And praise be, you worked those revs not with a primitive paddleshift transmission, but a six-speed open-gate manual. Just like an F1 car from ye olden days.

While we’re on the Nineties hypercars, the F1 needs a mention. Tenuous? Well, you sit in the middle, it’s built entirely from carbon fibre, and it used tech banned from F1 racing, like a ground-effect fan and active aerodynamics. So while the F1 was conceived to be the greatest driver’s car, rather than an out-and-out racer for the road, it owes enough of its make-up to the highest echelon of single-seater competition to make our list. Oh, you disagree, do you? Off to the comments with you.

Spain’s foremost purveyor of central-seat V12-powered insanity-on-wheels says, and we quote, the Tramontana is supposed to be a cross between a Formula One car and a jet fighter. It has the wings, the outboard wheels, and the canopy, for sure. Sadly, it’s unarmed and can only fly for short distances.

Hardly stealthy, either. So, not much of a fighter jet… unless you’re talking accelerative punch. But they have announced an ‘XTR’ version with a claimed 880bhp from its bi-turbo Mercedes engine. Top Gun sunglasses sold separately.

Remember this thing? The T1 had everything right on paper. Engineering input from the guys behind the McLaren F1, performance to outstrip the Bugatti Veyron (which was the undisputed speed king back in 2006) and looks that blended insect, racing car and spaceship. It was good for 0-62mph in 2.5sec, 0-100mph in under 5sec and 200mph, plus 3G of cornering force. And it was road legal. It had two seats. Air-con and a roof were on the options list. A proper car, then. Almost…

But, a series of highly public breakdowns and failures – including a fire while filming with something called Fifth Gear – and tricky handling knackered the T1’s reputation, before its parent company went bankrupt in 2014. Apparently as many as 16 found homes despite costing in excess of £230,000 each, but they and the supposed revival of the T1 in 2017 with even more power (gulp) haven’t really seen the light of day.

Conceived during the Palaeolithic period, strength tested throughout the Middle Ages and assembled following the fall of Constantinople, AMG's long-awaited hypercar is finally here.

Yes, it's been that long, AMG. After a seemingly interminable wait comes the Mercedes-AMG One: a two-seat Formula One car for the road.

Not a figure of speech, but a fact, because the AMG One famously uses the 1.6-litre turbo hybrid V6 from Lewis Hamilton’s F1 car. Well, when Hamilton’s F1 car was fast.

AMG worked closely with the F1 bods at Brixworth to build a turbocharged combustion engine with four electric motors: one on the turbo, another on the engine and two driving the front wheels, each able to spin up to 50,000rpm. This whipcrack quick V6 is mounted in the middle, said to rev faster than a nat-asp V8 thanks to a raft of F1-derived solutions.

The Valkyrie’s been part-designed by Red Bull aero genius Adrian Newey, for goodness’ sake. Its 11,000rpm V12 comes courtesy of Cosworth. The interior looks like it’s out of a steampunk F1 car from the future. Aston Martin says it’ll set comparable lap times to a Red Bull Racing car. And best of all, it’ll sound like a racer from the 1990s. When everything was better.

Here’s a historical curveball to finish.

In the 1980s, Porsche supplied McLaren with some 1.5-litre turbo V6 engines good for almost 1,000bhp in qualifying trim. Requiring a simple test mule, McLaren bunged one in the back of Porsche 911 Turbo. That’s a verifiable widowmaker of a sports car with an F1 motor hanging out the back. Cor blimey.

Lanzante, they of McLaren F1 Le Mans-winning fame and converters of the P1 GTR to road use, have said they’ll build 11 more examples, using bona-fide period F1 engines. Only the brave need apply.