It's good to torque

摘要

Tuning specialist AMG, now fully owned by Mercedes, has moved into building its own engines with the aim of providing "torque and lots of it". AMG is on a roll. On the eve of Aufrecht Melcher Grossaspach's 40th birthday, the Mercedes-owned tuning firm is more prolific, more innovative and more profitable than ever. After being brought out entirely by Mercedes in 1999, AMG, based in Affalterbach, near Stuttgart in Germany, is now an integral part of product development at Mercedes. And it shows. "We are there right from the start, the first thoughts on a new car evolve," says AMG president Volker Mornhinweg. Which explains why his muscle-bound AMG variants of new models have arrived on the market within months of the standard cars. The cars - to date, the E63, CLS63, CLK63, R63, S63, ML63 and the new CL63 -have all, as their name indicates, been powered by the same advanced 32-valve 6208cc 507bhpV8. Four years ago Mornhinweg and his team of engineers started work on a clean sheet project to develop a new V8 engine that would become the bedrock of its powerplant range. "We knew we would battle to make the current 5.5-litre supercharged V8 meet future emissions regulations," he explains. "It served us well, but we needed to push ahead. We needed something really new and advanced."