Putting a badge on the future of AMG

The Mercedes-Benz C450 AMG. Courtesy Mercedes-Benz

If you’ve been paying attention to the world of fast Mercs lately, you’ll have noticed some intriguing new vehicles appearing. For decades now, the AMG brand has been reserved for top-of-the-range, big-horsepower incarnations of the Mercedes range. But things are changing at AMG, and the Affalterbach-based Mercedes division is broadening its scope.

This started in 2010 with the SLS, the first AMG-only product, a supercar not based on an existing Mercedes. It was followed last year by the AMG GT, the SLS’s spiritual successor.

As well as introducing these “pure” AMG machines, the division is widening its remit in the other direction. When the fire-breathing new C63 was launched last month, it was revealed to journalists alongside an all-new AMG-badged model, the C450 AMG. Where the C63 boasted a 469bhp V8, the C450 sported a twin-turbocharged V6 with 362bhp, and all-wheel drive. Based on the “regular” C400, it had been significantly upgraded with AMG parts, including many from the C63 itself.

Keen-eyed onlookers noticed an interesting bit of nomenclature – the full name of the V8 monster is the Mercedes-AMG C63, while the new car is the Mercedes-Benz C450 AMG.

This new naming system tells the story. From now on, full-on hard-core AMG cars, like the C63, will be known as Mercedes-AMG models. But this new segment, between the AMG beasts and the regular Mercedes cars, sticks with the old naming system that labels them as Mercedes-Benz and adds the AMG suffix.

This new “AMG-lite” range, which so far comprises the C450 AMG and the GLE 450 AMG, is the result of the increasing power of the hard-core models, according to Tobias Moers, AMG’s chairman.

“The increase of the performance in our performance cars was so big that it shows a big gap to the standard cars, for example with the C400 and the C63,” he explains. “Obviously there’s room for something in between.”

Moers is very insistent that this new segment of less powerful AMG cars doesn’t dilute the brand. “It’s not a concern,” he says. “We’re aware of that discussion, but it’s a different car, in a different line-up, in a different segment. For us, it’s a new product line-up; we have the sports car, and now we have the sport models. We will always provide for the market driving performance and cars that fit perfect into the different segment.”

From a business perspective, Moers doesn’t expect cars such as the C450 to take away from the more established, top-of-the-range AMGs. Rather, he expects them to attract new customers to the AMG brand.

“We have a huge customer range and fan community for the C63. We sold more than 40,000 cars of the previous model and the order bank for the new C63 is nice. The C450 buyer is a different customer that we’re targeting – those that are looking not for that high-end performance but for something in between. We never before had an offering for these people.”

Moers says that comparison with Audi’s range is reasonable – think of the regular C-Class as Merc’s A4, with the C63 as the RS4 and the C450 as the S4.

These new entry-level AMG products aren’t one-offs – we’ll see more across the Mercedes range, and more AMG-only cars. Suggestions of what these could be are met with silence from Moers, but he admits that there’ll be more versions of the AMG GT.

“Everybody was enthusiastic about the AMG GT, so there is a lot of room for different variants in the future. It gives us a load of homework, because AMG is not a big company.”

Our money is on more AMG-­only cars at different price points. The SLS was in supercar territory and the AMG GT targets the Porsche 911. But that still leaves plenty of rival cars waiting for a challenge from ­Affalterbach.

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