(tires burning)
- Created in a guy's garage in the shadow of Mercedes
comes the craziest band of Germans ever.
Sorry Rammstein.
They're the originators of the bad-ass luxury car
and the benchmark to which all sport sedans are measured.
They started as underdogs who would later go on
to dominate the road and the track.
This is everything you need to know
to get up to speed on AMG.
(fast-paced synth music)
The AMG story begins in the mid 60's
when Mercedes engineers Hans Werner Aufrecht
and Erhard Melcher started working on a race engine
with the development department at Daimler Benz.
This race motor would be used in the Mercedes 300 SE sedan
which at the time was the fastest production car in Germany.
But at the track, it was a different story.
The stock power of 170 horses was crummy.
Oh, James, don't you think you're being a little harsh?
No.
It was downright crummy.
So Melcher fitted the fuel injection system
from a 300 SL Gullwing onto the SE's engine
which boosted output to 238 horsepower.
♪ More, more more, more, more ("Rebel Yell" by Billy Idol) ♪
- Before Aufrecht and Melcher
How many times did you put their names in there? (laughs)
But before they had a chance to show off the new engine,
Daimler Benz shut down the race team.
Scheisse, what to do now?
I have a plan.
Put the engine under your shirt and meet me at my house.
Under my shirt?
Yeah. Okay.
I'm not positive that's exactly how it happened
but they did work on the engine in their spare time.
Back to the story.
They put the motor in a 300 SE sedan
and entered it in the German Touring Car Championship.
They didn't have any support from Mercedes, in fact,
they weren't even supposed to be working on the car.
But the risk payed off because their secret race car
went on to win ten races.
The next year, Werner left Mercedes.
What good was working for a company
that wouldn't let him express himself with his art?
He asked Erhard to go with him and Erhard was like,
Ja wohl, dude.
Ja wohl, a million times, ja wohl.
Their names were Aufrecht and Melcher.
And they were working at Aufrecht's house in Grossaspach.
AMG.
Their goal was to use what they learned
at the track to make road cars faster.
And they weren't salty about leaving Mercedes.
As far as they were concerned, Mercedes were still the best.
AMG's first big project was to turn
another 300 SE sedan into a race car.
But this one was different, this one was big.
The 300 SEL was Merc's flagship luxury model
powered by an enormous 6.3 liter V8 engine.
Powerful enough to make the 300 SEL the
fasted sedan in the world.
But the SEL was over 16 feet long and weighed 3,800 pounds.
That's like the same size as my dad.
AMG tore the SEL's engine apart
and replaced everything inside.
Pistons, rockers, a new cam shaft.
The new motor now had a displacement of 6.8 liters
and it made 428 horsepower.
But the motor wasn't the only thing they changed.
They replaced the doors
with ones made from aluminum to increase grip.
They widened the wheel track
to keep the giant tires from poking out.
They gave it fender flares.
The 300 SEL or
Red Pig
made its debut at the 1971 24 hours of spa in Belgium.
And it blew people's minds, people couldn't believe it.
This was a car your divorced uncle would drive
and it's destroying the real sports cars.
It won its class and finished second overall.
AMG had proven they could win
without the support from Mercedes.
After the victory, AMG had some serious cred.
So everyone wanted them to modify their Mercedes.
So they did.
Through the 70's, AMG became the go-to guys
if you wanted a bad-ass Merc.
And by the 80's, nobody in the world
had a better reputation than AMG.
But in 1986, AMG would drop a bomb on the automotive scene
in the form of the most brutal sedan ever devised.
Like the Red Pig before it, AMG took a 300 SE sedan,
pulled out that puny six-cylinder engine,
and installed a heavily-modified V8.
They also tweaked the body to be more aerodynamic
and aggressive, they installed bigger brakes,
and gave it some super cool looking five-spokes.
The result was a sedan so menacing,
so evil that Darth Vader himself would insist
that someone else take the wheel.
One auto journalist called AMG's new car
about as subtle as a hammer.
It turns out the German word for hammer, is hammer.
And AMG thought, huh, I like the sound of that.
Hammer Time.
And the rest is history.
The AMG Hammer did zero to sixty in five seconds
and it had a top speed of 178 miles an hour.
The interior was super nice, it was quiet.
And when driving over decent roads,
the ride was as smooth as I am.
To this day, the Hammer is one of AMG's
crowning achievements.
After the Hammer's huge success,
Mercedes was like, alright, we should do something
before AMG makes us all look really, really foolish.
So they worked out a contract with the former employees
so Mercedes could sell AMG cars
at their dealerships around the world.
("Around the World" by Daft Punk)
- The relationship wasn't salty obviously,
but Mercedes figured if someone was going to sell
bad-ass Benz's, it might as well be Benz.
But Mercedes wasn't the only partnership that AMG would make
The Mitzubishi Galant was a four-door sedan with a
four-cylinder and was even offered in all-wheel drive.
It was basically the Evo before the Evo.
(car revving)
Mitsubishi hit up AMG to have them do some work
on the Galant and AMG was like, alright,
well we usually do V8 stuff but this could be fun.
The Galant AMG was front-wheel drive
and, unlike the Evo, naturally aspirated.
But it had the same motor, the 4G63.
And AMG tuned it to redline at eight grand.
They also gave the Galant the standard AMG treatment
with body tweaks and new wheels.
Only 500 were ever made and all of them were sold in Japan,
so (beep) us. (laughs)
Back in Germany, the first car developed in the new
Mercedes AMG contract partnership was the C36 AMG.
This new sedan was aimed squarely at the BMW M3.
And even used the straight-six engine
like its Bavarian counterpart.
In 1998, the C36 got an upgrade in the C43
which returned to AMG's V8 roots.
For their entire history, every single one
of AMG's V8 engines has been hand-built.
Each of the 250 people currently working at the AMG engine
plant has their own set of tools and each craftsmen
builds one engine at a time from start to finish .
They're so good at it that it only takes them about
three hours to complete an engine.
- My fingers hurt.
- After each engine is built, the final step is placing
and individualized placard on the intake
with the engine builder's signature.
They sign their (bleed) work because they're proud of it.
In 1999, Mercedes bought a majority interest in AMG
which means they were still free to do whatever they wanted
as long as it was only on Mercedes Benz models.
One of the first official cars AMG would build for Mercedes
was another racecar for the road, the CLK GTR.
(engine accelerating)
The race version was developed in 1997
for the FIA GT Championship.
And the rules required that 25 road legal cars
had to be built.
But after two years, the series was canceled
and AMG decided to build the cars anyway.
The CLK GTR was not powered by a V8 like AMG's previous cars
but a 6.9 liter, (chuckles) 69, V12 capable of
604 horsepower and a top speed of 214 miles per hour.
After the car ended production, Mercedes would
keep building the V12 for Pagani
who used it in their Zonda and Huayra supercars.
Only one man at AMG is certified to build it.
His workspace is sectioned off from everybody else.
They make him work in a little room by himself.
This is real.
He must be going insane.
(horn beeping)
With the CLK GTR, Hammer, and Red Pig under their belt,
AMG had a reputation for building cars
that had a knack for standing out.
But what if you wanted something to blend in?
The 2005 E55 AMG Wagon was the car for you.
It was the ultimate sleeper from the outside it looked like
your typical suburban kid-hauler.
The only clues being the AMG and Kompressor badges.
But if you looked under the hood,
you'd find a hand-built 5.4 liter supercharged V8.
(tires screeching)
Through all of AMG's life, they stayed true
to their philosophy of building performance models
of any Mercedes.
Unline BMW's M-division who only focus on cars with
lateral agility, like me.
What this means is that there are a ton of AMG versions
of cars you wouldn't expect.
Like the R63, a V8 powered minivan with over 500 horsepower.
And the G65,
a G-Wagon with a Biturbo V12.
There's even an A45 AMG, a hatch-back with 355 horsepower
and all-wheel drive.
But the craziest AMG of them all, by far,
("Run" by AWOLNATION)
The G63 AMG six-by-six.
This six-wheeled Behemoth weighs in at over 9,000 pounds
and rides on 37-inch off-road tires.
It was originally developed for the Australian military
but some Mercedes VIP's saw it in action and said
hey, give that thing a nice interior and we'll buy some.
The six-by-six can go pretty much anywhere and over anything
It of course has six-wheel drive and can inflate and deflate
its tires depending on conditions.
I want one.
So what's next for AMG?
In the spirit of the Red Pig and the CLK GTR,
AMG is once again putting everything they've learned
at the track into one car.
The Mercedes AMG Project 1.
Mercedes has won a Formula Championship four times in a row
and to celebrate, their building an F1 car for the street.
Mercedes says the Project 1 will use a drive train and
hybrid system which Mercedes claims will make
1,000 horsepower.
And the steering wheel isn't even a wheel, it's a rectangle.
Because it's a racecar.
From modest beginnings building engines out of a garage
in Germany, to designing the most incredible hyper-car ever.
The AMG story is one of precision, perserverance,
and building absolute sledgehammers
out of sophisticated sedans.
(bleep) sick.
That's everything you need to know to get up to speed on AMG
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(hiccups) Jesus. (laughing)