Efek F1 pada Mercedes

Call it the Drive to Survive effect, Formula 1’s booming popularity is helping Mercedes-Benz attract a young audience.

Luxury car makers traditionally attract an older clientele, unsurprisingly given they cost more money, but the explosion in interest in F1, and the German firms success in it, is having a tangible impact on how younger car buyers view Mercedes. Specifically the brand’s performance division, AMG, is getting more youthful.

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Recently installed Mercedes-Benz Australia boss, Jaime Cohen, said has seen this impact first-hand in his previous roles with the company around the world.

“A good example,” Cohen explained. “because you’ve got C-Class buyers, A-Class buyers, they’re picking one car, right? It’s like, who’s the demographic, right? We don’t know yet. For us, it’s good that we’re getting younger because AMG has helped us with that. Also the Formula 1 relationship there has made us a younger average, and that’s excellent. That’s also something we look for because we want, we’re looking for long-term relationships. So we want to be there at this age and change their taste.”

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Cohen told Torquecafe of his personal experience seeing the impact of Mercedes’ F1 success during his time working for the brand in his native Mexico.

“In 2018, ‘19, I started to get more involved with Formula 1 because of my job in Mexico,” he said. “And there’s this race in Mexico City and I would walk in at home with, you know, the jackets with all the logos and the t-shirts and stuff and I would show it to my kids.

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“[I’d ask] ‘Hey, do you want one?’ [and they’d say] ‘Oh, no, no, we don’t want one.’ Three years later, they’re the ones calling me. ‘Hey, dad, do you have any more? “Do you have more of those jackets?’ The young people are really getting into it. And they know it’s Mercedes and they know it’s AMG and, and it really works.”

But it’s not just the merchandise or interest level that’s crossing over between F1 and the Mercedes showroom, Cohen said the company also sees a direct link between the technology it develops in F1 and its latest generation of road cars, and not just the AMG models.

“Look at the components we’re bringing from Formula 1 into that car over there,” he said, pointing to the new AMG CLE53 Coupe. “Yeah, it definitely helps. We communicate that the customer knows that anyway. Many times we’re not communicating that and they know it [anyway]. Some of the adjustments, for example, you will see in the S-Class, the S-Class will adjust according to the speed, the height automatically, that’s Formula 1 technology. Or the seats as they grab you, that comes from Formula 1, too. So the technological partnership is there.”

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The most obvious transfer between Mercedes-AMG’s F1 effort and the road car division is the AMG One. The hypercar uses a road-legal version of the V6 turbocharged, hybrid powertrain from the company’s championship winning F1 seasons. It has attracted plenty of F1 owners too, with the likes of Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg, Valtteri Bottas and David Coulthard all buying one.