German carmakers always pull out the stops for the biennial Frankfurt international autoshow and for this year's event, Mercedes will be going further still, using the show to celebrate 50 years of its AMG tuning and racing arm. It will also showcase 100 cars, including six all-new vehicles from electric concepts to electrifying performance cars.
The highlight will be the first real-world glimpse of the Mercedes-AMG Project One hypercar, which Mercedes has been hyping up since January.
When it goes on sale in 2018, it will be the world's first road-legal production car to boast latest-generation Formula 1 hybrid technology. Its ability to recuperate energy lost through heat and via braking, combined with turbocharging and a high-revving, low-cubic capacity V6 engine will be enough to catapult the two-seater way beyond a 200mph top speed.
Like VW and Audi, Mercedes has also pledged to go all in on electrification before the end of the decade, and so will be unveiling its second EQ plug-in electric concept car. This one will be a compact city car to sit alongside the full-size electric SUV it unveiled exactly a year ago in Paris.
And while that car is still just a concept, Mercedes will be unveiling another zero-emissions car that's just months from production.
The GLC F-Cell EQ Power uses a hybrid hydrogen fuel cell system and promises a 500-km range and short refilling times thanks to using hydrogen gas. However, due to the way in which hydrogen is captured for use in fuel cell cars, the company can only describe the car as "locally emissions-free".
Mercedes used the Shanghai autoshow in April to unveil the new S Class and at Frankfurt it will be showing off its stablemates -- the S-Class Coupe and S-Class Cabriolet. A perfectly-timed move as BMW is expected to use the same event to launch a direct competitor in the form of the 8-Series Coupé.
Other debuts that the firm has confirmed ahead of the show's official press day on September 12 include a fully autonomous concept car optimised for the sharing economy, based on the current-generation Smart plug-in electric car, as well as the real-world debut of the X-Class, the first Mercedes-Benz pickup truck in its 131-year history.
