ONE

Segment
Coupe

The car world as a whole is currently looking forward to the future, with electric power the chief means of propulsion for new cars, but fortunately, there's a small corner of this world that is looking back to the past, when glorious engines and analog feel were all that mattered. Aston Martin has unveiled its DB5 Goldfinger continuation cars, there's a way to experience the old Corvette Grand Sport, and even old Formula One cars are being brought back to life. Here's another continuation, and like very few others, this project is not going to be making use of modern advances. What you're going to hear in the video below is old-school, unadulterated, noisy, internal combustion glory - 16 cylinders of it.

What you're hearing is a 1.5-liter supercharged V16 producing 591 horsepower and capable of at least 12,000 rpm, and it will send its power to the rear wheels via a BRM-built five-speed manual. British Racing Motors is responsible for the sonorous sound clip, having successfully dyno-tested one of the three V16 engines that it plans to fit to three new examples of its 1950 Type 15 V16 F1 race car. The video was taken of original engine number two, and its testing was carried out so that engineers at the company could learn more about the complexities of the notoriously complicated engine.

With more than 36,000 parts, that's a tough job. It was made all the more difficult by the fact that this particular engine had not been started since 1999, when former BRM F1 driver Jose-Froilan Gonzalez made the mistake of over-revving it during BRM's 50th-anniversary celebration at the UK's Silverstone F1 circuit.

Hall and Hall is involved in the restoration process and described the aftermath of that unfortunate event as leaving the motor completely "lunched". The fact that it's running again is a testament to how hard everyone is working on this project, but a bigger clue to how obsessively original those three F1 cars will be when done is this: engineers will be using around 20,000 original drawings, including roughly 5,000 blueprints, to make sure that the continuation cars are identical to the 1950 originals. BRM says that there "will be no modern interpretation. It will be exactly as it was." With only one of the originals surviving as "a cherished museum piece" and only three 'new' models being built on original, unused chassis numbers from 1950, you may be able to pick up a Mercedes-AMG ONE for less.