AMG fairy tale
We will tell you the story of AMG, yes, that acronym that evokes Mercedes’ sportiest cars. Do you know it? In our opinion it’s a beautiful story.
In fact, it tells of two men, two mechanics who after working for years in the preparation of racing engines saw their employer taking the decision to leave the world of Motorsport and consequently decided to set up their own company to continue doing what they were doing before.
These two gentlemen are Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher, two former Mercedes employees who, as mentioned, by combining the two initials of their surnames and the city where they embarked on their personal adventure, Grossaspach, founded AMG in 1967 (we do not tell you the extended name of the company because it is difficult to pronounce by a non-German speaker!).
After only 5 years of activity, and we imagine some difficulties, they succeeded in something incredible: in 1971 they prepared a Mercedes 300 SEL 6.8 for endurance races and in the 24 Hours of Spa and the car arrived first of its class and second overall! An incredible result for a, at that time small, tuner. Their love for large-displacement engines was never abandoned and in fact still today AMG is a symbol of performance and large displacements.
After the excellent result of Spa the business grew and their name began to become famous, so after 5 years they moved from Grossaspach to Affalterbach and increased the number of employees from 40 to almost 400 and systematically began to “pimp” the Mercedes that customers found too “boring”.
Yet another victory in the races bring AMG higher and higher: during the stage of the European tourism championship at the Nurburgring circuit in fact AMG won with their Mercedes 450 SLC AMG; this convinced Mercedes, in 1988, to entrust them completely with the management of the DTM championship as official team. In the meantime, during all this racing activity, AMG managed to complete its first “built in-house” engine, obviously installed on a Mercedes.
In 1990 the official collaboration contract with Mercedes arrived, which led AMG to produce cars in large-scale. The first example, in 1993, is the C36 AMG (280 HP six-cylinder in-line 3.6 engine).
CLK is a very important acronym for AMG and for Mercedes: in fact, in 1997, Mercedes through AMG, supplies the safety cars to Formula 1 (CLK AMG) and enters the FIA GT championship with the CLK GTR (incredible car, in our opinion one of the most beautiful GTs that has ever participated in the championship).
In 1999 5000 AMG branded cars are delivered and in the same year Mercedes takes over 51% of AMG! That’s not all: in 1999, an iconic car, with installed the v12 developed by AMG, was released on the market … do you know what it is ??? The Pagani Zonda! (another amazing story the one of Pagani. We will tell you more about that in the near future).
Three other important dates for this company are 2005, 2009 and 2013, where in order: Mercedes buys AMG in full and makes it become an integral part of their product range; the AMG SLS (gull wings in memory of the Mercedes 300 SL of 53) is presented – a unique design car that will give life to AMG’s offer as a stand-alone brand and last but not least the official entry of the AMG brand into F1.
Ah, we forgot to tell you something: until a few months ago in AMG there was a rule “one man, one engine” each engine was in fact assembled entirely by one mechanic and each car had a plate with the name of the mechanic who had assembled it. Something almost unique in an era where cars are almost entirely made by robots!
We really like this story of men, cars and chasing dreams and Marco has a soft spot for AMGs (even if we have never had one) and who knows that in the future an AMG GT won’t become part of the family!
