This week’s history article follows on from my recent article about Alpina, the BMW tuning house. The AMG that this article covers is the Mercedes tuning house not the very old Swedish car company or AM General, the makers of the Humvee.
AMG was founded in 1967 to build racing engines by Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher, both former Mercedes-Benz engineers. The company was originally based in Grossaspach near Stuttgart. AMG as a name stands for Aufrecht, Melcher, Grossaspach.
During the late 60s and early 70s, AMG built racing cars based on Mercedes models for the German Touring Car Championship and this soon turned into a partnership where both companies worked together to build the track cars.
AMG started to develop tuning parts for Mercedes owners and like Alpina and Abarth, were an unofficial supplier of exhausts and other performance parts and body kits. With the racing tie up with Mercedes, AMG started to provide “official” parts and during the 80s produced full spec cars, slotting in larger engines into the smaller coupes and saloons. An example was the AMG Hammer, an E class Mercedes with a 5.6 litre V8. It set the scene for the future high performance vehicles.
During the 80s, Melcher sold out to Aufrecht but continued to work for AMG in the parts division whilst Aufrecht ran the company. Then in 1991, Daimler-Benz bought 51% of the company to cement their relationship and AMG models started to be sold through the Mercedes dealer network, starting with the C36. With the sale of a controlling interest to Daimler, Aufrecht transferred the racing team to a new company – HWA (his initials) and this company is still the official racing team for Mercedes and builds specialist cars on behalf of Mercedes for “High Net Worth Customers” – their words not mine. Basically, if you want a higher spec Merc than an AMG, the factory will give it HWA to finish off!
AMG was completely acquired in 2005 when Aufrecht sold his remaining stock to Daimler and AMG became the in-house tuning division called Mercedes-AMG.
You can tell a true AMG model because the models usually have a two digit number, for example, the standard SLK models would have names such as SLK230 or SLK320, the current AMG version is the SLK55. Many of the other Mercedes models will have some AMG performance parts but will retain the standard moniker.
AMG build their own V8 and V12s which are fitted to some of the SL series sports models and they supply Pagani with the V12 that was first seen in the mid 70s SL73. AMG also supplied the engine for the Chrysler Crossfire SRT-6 – it used the same motor that was fitted to the SLK32 and C32. Daimler owned Chrysler when this model was released and it was made in Germany by Karmann and used quite a few Mercedes underpinnings. SRT (Street and Racing Technology) is the performance arm of the Chrysler Group and they clearly were one of the parts of Chrysler that benefited from the short lived relationship.
Have a look at Mercedes-AMG.com and hwaag.com.