Today, AMG is known worldwide as Mercedes’ in-house tuner, but the company founded by Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher in 1967 started life as an independent engineering firm specializing in performance improvements for Mercedes-Benz vehicles.
Since its beginning, AMG stuck to a simple philosophy that helped it grow into the most important Mercedes tuner, prior to being bought by the carmaker: it took its customers’ wishes seriously.
While it may sound like a no-brainer nowadays, back then automakers weren’t really used to listen to their customers’ feedback about their products.
AMG, on the other hand, built cars to suit their customers’ desires and that helped their business take off. The company’s success as a tuner and racing specialist made Mercedes take over AMG.
From 1999 onwards AMG was renamed Mercedes-AMG following DaimlerChrysler’s acquisition of 51 percent of AMG shares. The company’s range of activities is now more diverse than ever, from tuning to racing and culminating with developing from scratch its first-ever production car, the SLS AMG.
Scroll down to watch how AMG evolved from a small garage tuner to a global performance brand.
By Dan Mihalascu
VIDEO