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Mercedes-AMG is the tuning arm of the Mercedes-Benz car company. Mercedes-Benz acquired AMG in 1999 as a wholly owned subsidary. Production climbed from 500 cars a year to 20,000 AMG vehicles in 2005 (half of which were delivered to the United States).

AMG or Aufrecht Melcher Großaspach was founded in 1967 as AMG Motorenbau und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH (AMG Engine Production and Development, Ltd.) by former Mercedes engineers Hans-Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher in a town near Stuttgart called Großaspach.

Overview

AMG started off by designing and testing racing engines. They expanded their business into building bespoke road cars, based upon standard Mercedes cars.

By the early 1980s, AMG had moved to nearby located in Affalterbach under the sole ownership of Aufrecht. Erhard Melcher stayed at the second location, a former mill in Burgstall, to deliver engine parts.

Mainly for the modern Mercedes-Benz W126 and Mercedes-Benz W201 models, AMG was producing a range of unofficial upgrade and accessories packages, although there were no official tie-ups until the mid '80s, when AMG started to supply the company with aftermarket alloy wheels and styling products.

To take advance of the DTM race successes, official AMG-Mercedes models were developed in the 1990s. Since the Mercedes-Benz takeover, AMG sales have risen over 500%.

AMG also provides safety cars for the FIA Formula 1 World Championship.

Racing

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, AMG entered the big Mercedes 300 SEL 6.3 V8 sedan in the Spa 24 Hours and the European Touring Car Championship.

AMG and Mercedes worked together on Mercedes-Benz W201 cars for the 1988 Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft (DTM, German Touring Car Championship). AMG was made the official partner.

In order to retain a small dedicated racing team, H.W.A GmbH was founded by H.-W. Aufrecht in 1999. Their first car was the ill-fated Mercedes-Benz CLR. Since 2000, HWA builds and runs the cars for Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM).

Six successive lightly modified Mercedes-Benz AMG models (including, most recently, an SLK 55) have acted as the official Safety Cars of the F1 racing series.

Models

Through the early 2000s, AMG focused on supercharged engines, but the company officially abandoned this technology in 2006 with the introduction of the M156 V8. On January 16, 2006, Mercedes-AMG Chairman Volker Mornhinweg told AutoWeek that the company would use turbocharging for higher output rather than supercharging.*

Current AMG models

All AMG engines are hand built using a "one man, one engine" philosophy at the current AMG plant in Affalterbach, Germany. To signify this, each AMG engine builder stamps the engines they produce with an engraved plaque depicting their signature.

As part of the official Mercedes product line, the AMG models are sold side-by-side with regular production models, unlike those offered by other Mercedes tuning firms such as Brabus.

55

The main engine is a 5.4 L V8 unit, designated the M113, that carries the "55" designation. However, this engine comes in two configurations.
  • The first configuration is found in the C55 AMG, CLK55 AMG and SLK55 AMG is a naturally aspirated V8 with 360 PS (355 hp/265 kW).
  • The other configuration is a similar unit but with a highly efficient Lysholm type supercharger manufactured by IHI, found in the rest of the AMG 55 models. The published output according to Mercedes varies from 476 PS (469 hp/350 kW) to 517 PS (509 hp/380 kW) depending on various methods of power measurements and different ECU programming for national legislations.

AMG will phase out both the naturally aspirated and supercharged 5.4 L engines in favor of the new M156 V8 beginning in 2006.

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Mercedes-AMG".

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