![]() ![]() In the first year of the then new FIA GT Championship (1997), the competition version of the W208 Mercedes-Benz CLK dominated its opponents with six victories in 11 races. Oh, and the car’s enduring legacy as a cornerstone of the modern AMG era counts for something, too, right? Nearly outstripping the C36’s performance? The available black-on-black checkered interior upholstery. A four-speed automatic transmission directed power to the rear wheels, enabling a zero-to-60-mph sprint of 6.0 seconds in our testing, which found that the car’s top speed was limited to 152 mph. From a distance, the C36 AMG looks like any other W202-generation C-class.īeneath the C36’s hood sat a 276-hp inline-six, its 3.6-liter displacement being larger than that of workaday Benz inline-sixes. Design-wise, the classic chunky five-spoke AMG wheels, small rear spoiler, and subtle body kit and badging set the tone for future AMG models’ under-the-radar look. Although the first C36 didn’t make its way to the United States until 1995, it was the first AMG to be sold here officially. Strong sales dovetailed with positive reception from the public, and roughly 5200 units were sold worldwide between 19. The C36 AMG was the first car born after AMG signed a contract to collaborate with Daimler in an official capacity in 1990. ![]() The original race car no longer exists, but in 2006, Mercedes-AMG built a replica to honor the legend. The big Benz stuck out in a field of much smaller vehicles such as the Chevrolet Camaro, and it earned the nickname Red Sow or Red Pig. The 6.8 excelled on the straights, outrunning nearly everything else, but poor braking hurt it in other parts of the track. Handling was improved with bigger front wishbones, a bulked-up rear axle with a heavy-duty differential, and a more stiffly tuned air suspension. Weight was dropped from 4035 pounds to 3605, thanks in part to new aluminum doors and 10- and 12-inch-wide magnesium wheels adapted from those on the wild C111 test car. He modified the combustion chambers, polished the intake and exhaust ducts, incorporated two throttle flaps within the intake tract, added an extra oil cooler, and topped it off with a racing exhaust. Melcher used modified rocker arms, lighter connecting rods, Mahle pistons, and bigger intake valves. Numerous changes were made during development for the racetrack. At Spa the big SEL 6.8 took a class victory and placed second in the overall classification behind a Ford Capri. AMG increased displacement from 6330 cubic centimeters to 6835, upping the output to 422 horsepower and boosting torque from 369 lb-ft to 448. The four-door’s impressive performance spurred Aufrecht and Melcher to milk the engine for even more power in preparation to race at the 24 Hours of Spa. In “racing trim,” which meant lacking bumpers and extraneous chrome, the SEL 6.3 won a six-hour race at Macao in 1969 with Erich Waxenberger behind the wheel. Its 247-hp 6.3-liter V-8 helped make it one of the quickest production sedans in the world at the time. Mercedes-Benz unveiled the 300SEL 6.3 at the 1968 Geneva auto show. Here are 13 of the most important offspring from that entanglement: Over the decades, AMG and Mercedes-Benz had various contracts and partnership arrangements before the former finally became a fully integrated in-house tuner for the latter. Starting with the 1971 300SEL 6.8, AMG quickly earned a reputation as the place to go for advanced performance development for Mercedes-Benz products (although, curiously, AMG also worked with Mitsubishi on multiple projects in the 1980s and ’90s). That translates to “Aufrecht, Melcher, Großaspach engineering firm, design and testing for the development of racing engines.” (Großaspach is the German town where Aufrecht was born.) You can see why the far shorter initialism AMG stuck. ![]() In 1967, they repurposed an old mill in Burgstall, Germany, and named the business Aufrecht Melcher Großaspach Ingenieurbüro, Konstruktion und Versuch zur Entwicklung von Rennmotoren. But after a new homologation rule requiring race cars to be sourced from production models steered Benz away from motorsports at the end of 1965, the pair struck off to start their own tuning and engineering office. They began working together at Daimler-Benz in the early 1960s and built a strong relationship engineering and developing racing engines. Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher had a fight the first day they ever met, but that did not prevent them from recognizing each other’s talents. ![]()
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