TWIN PEAKS

At long last, we've got AMG and Aston's self proclaimed F1 cars for the road together... on the UK's fastest track

- OLLIE MARRIAGE

EAR DEFENDERS. NOW WE'RE TALKING.

Or perhaps not. Anyway, for the full 'F1 team principal on the pitwall' vibe, the Valkyrie comes equipped with a set of purposeful motorsport cans, complete with mouthpiece and trailing cables. For the full 'no, it's honestly fine in here' vibe the AMG One has a pair of surreptitious Sennheiser noise cancelling in-ear buds. They're engraved with the owner's name. These two facts tell you a lot about each car.

That they're terrifyingly noisy, mainly. And they genuinely are. You'll have heard this about the Valk already, that while those outside enjoy pure red blooded V12 symphony, those inside endure pure white noise V12 screech. But that the AMG One suffers similarly comes as a shock.

Did Merc not have enough time to sort that out? Six years it took the One to make it into production, after it was first announced as the Project One in September 2017. Or is it that simply in keeping with the spirit of the car? We'll find out. Anyway, it endured roughly the same gestation as the Valkyrie, with that landing in owners' collections in 2022, the AMG a year later. Technology developed, CEOs changed (the current Mercedes boss, Ola Källenius, joked "We were drunk when we said yes" to signing off the One), but both firms stuck to their guns. Neither did a Jaguar XJ220 and promised one thing, only to deliver another.