Mercedes-Benz's high-performance division, AMG, has undergone a subtle reinvention in recent times. It used to build terrifyingly fast luxury saloons, coupes and roadsters, plus the odd uncompromising road-racer, but for the most part, they were blunt instruments. Now, though, AMG builds terrifyingly fast luxury saloons, coupes and roadsters, plus the odd uncompromising road-racer, and almost without exception, they are fantastically responsive and rewarding performance cars. The circus performer finally got its PhD.
Our pick of the 10 best AMG cars ever includes those old-school blunt instruments, plus its modern, precision machinery, and we discuss them in the order in which they appeared.
Best Mercedes AMG Cars Ever
- AMG 300 CE 6.0 'The Hammer' (1986-1992)
- Mercedes CLK-GTR AMG (1988-1999)
- Mercedes SL73 AMG (1995)
- Mercedes C63 AMG Black Series (2011-2015)
- Mercedes SLS AMG Black Series (2013-2014)
- Mercedes-AMG S63 Coupe (2014-2020)
- Mercedes-AMG E63 S Estate (2016-)
- Mercedes-AMG GT C (2017-)
- Mercedes-AMG G63 (2018-)
- Mercedes-AMG A45 S (2019-)
AMG 300 CE 6.0 'The Hammer' (1986-1992)
Not the very first AMG road car, but certainly the one that gave Mercedes’ tuning wing the kudos on which it traded for many years. A number of AMG models have been dubbed The Hammer, but the AMG 300 CE 6.0 was the original, and its no-nonsense epithet perfectly embodied the car’s blunt persona.
Powered, inevitably, by a whacking great V8 engine, which was good for 375bhp, the 300 CE set the tone for every subsequent AMG: if it doesn’t thump hard, sound like thunder and look as menacing as a street gang in a dark alley, it’s not a proper AMG. Three different engine sizes were offered – 5.0, 5.6 and 6.0 litres – and only 12 cars were ever fitted with the biggest of them.
This bludgeoning, wrecking-ball image suited AMG for a good couple of decades, but bosses eventually realised that a little precision would complement all that brute force. Nowadays, certain AMGs are among the very sharpest performance implements of their type, but every one of them retains just a little of The Hammer’s thuggish personality.
Mercedes CLK-GTR AMG (1988-1999)
Don’t be fooled by the way it looks: the CLK-GTR AMG really was a road-legal car. A couple of dozen were built and sold to customers for what was a record-breaking asking price for a production car of more than US $1.5m – although it really did stretch the definition of ‘production’ to snapping point.
It was built to homologate Mercedes’ GT1 competition car. Though it scored countless endurance racing victories around the world, the motorsport version never shone at the greatest endurance race of them all, the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Nonetheless, the road-going CLK-GTR still has motorsport cred to shame every other AMG road car before or since – including the forthcoming One hypercar, which looks rather half-hearted by comparison.
Its engine was a 6.9-litre V12 that sent more than 600bhp to the rear wheels via a motorsport-style sequential gearbox. Find a runway long enough, and the CLK-GTR would reach a top speed of 214mph.
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Mercedes SL73 AMG (1995)
Not quite the rarest AMG ever, but with fewer than 100 built, the SL73 remains a true unicorn. It took its name from the gargantuan 7.3-litre V12 that was somehow shoehorned beneath its bonnet. No AMG has ever used a bigger engine than this, a version of which also powered one of the most exotic supercars ever produced, the Pagani Zonda.
The SL has long been Mercedes’ ultra-sophisticated and incomparably refined cabriolet grand tourer. With that 518bhp V12 hammering away at the rear axle, though, the more sinister side of its character was unleashed. It would do 200mph with a tailwind, but to the untrained eye, it looked like any other AMG-fettled SL.
Lashings of leather and an entire forest’s worth of wood in the cabin meant you could vaporise rear tyres from the very lap of luxury. Just don’t expect the SL73 to navigate corners anything like as effortlessly as it demolishes straights.
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Mercedes C63 AMG Black Series (2011-2015)
We all knew Mercedes-AMG could produce charismatic fast cars with stacks of power and crushing performance. Not long after the turn of the century, though, it wanted to prove it could build cars that were every bit as precise and responsive as rivals from Porsche and BMW’s M division.
The Black Series nameplate emerged in 2006 and, five years later, the C63 AMG Black Series showed how effectively AMG’s more studious approach could be applied to best-selling models such as the C-Class.
It looked tougher than any performance car available for even vaguely comparable money, it went like stink thanks to a monstrous 6.2-litre V8 and, most importantly of all, it handled beautifully. The quality of the damping in particular was far beyond anything AMG has delivered to date, and the car lightly skipped across even the bumpiest roads in a manner that was entirely at odds with its brutalist appearance.
Mercedes SLS AMG Black Series (2013-2014)
Leave the SLS AMG Black Series’ thunderous V8 engine to one side, and you still have the finest performance car ever to roll out of AMG’s Affalterbach headquarters. For one thing, there’s the way it looks, because the already striking shape of the standard SLS is brought to life by the Black Series’ dramatic aerodynamic body kit. Then there are the gullwing doors, which rise elegantly to almost meet in the middle.
This hardcore SLS drove beautifully, too, with the poise and precision of a racing car. Its steering was pin-sharp and the front axle so determined to hold onto a line, that you began to suspect you could turn into any corner at whatever speed you chose.
To those show-stopping looks and hyper-agile dynamics, AMG added one of the most evocative internal combustion engines it ever shoehorned into a road car. The 6.2-litre dry-sump V8 pulled through the mid-range with the muscle of a turbocharged motor, then it ripped around to the redline at 8,000rpm the way only a high-revving naturally-aspirated engine can, all with the kind of soundtrack that had family pets for miles around cowering behind the sofa.
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Mercedes-AMG S63 Coupe (2014-2020)
AMG knows how to build high-performance family cars, supercars and super-saloons. With the S63 Coupe, it demonstrated its prowess with very fast luxury cars as well. In fact, no other car of recent times – and potentially any time full stop – combined enormous speed with a marshmallow-soft ride and total noise suppression quite like this.
The S63 Coupe was so soothing on a long journey that you tended to arrive more relaxed than when you set off. The most comfortable seats in the business helped, as did its party trick: ‘carving mode’, in which the body actually leaned in towards the apex of a corner rather than away from it. Not much use in spirited driving because the shortage of conventional body roll left you guessing how much grip there was to call on, but for ramping up comfort levels even further, it was a masterstroke. Meanwhile the cabin, which seemed to take inspiration from luxury yachts, was more inviting a space than most living rooms.
Mercedes S-Class Review
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Mercedes-AMG E63 S Estate (2016-)
The super-estate segment was changed for good in 2016. With close to 600bhp from a twin-turbo V8 engine, and four-wheel drive to put all that power down to the road, the E63 S Estate blended usable performance and practicality like no other wagon before it.
Aside from a low-speed ride that could be on the bumpy side (even though it had sophisticated air suspension), there was almost nothing the E63 S Estate couldn’t do. It could seat five in luxury, swallow a wardrobe, ferry big dogs about the place, scythe along a B-road with the agility of a sports car, and out-drag Porsche 911s.
The 4matic four-wheel drive system is switchable, too, meaning you can choose to divert every single horsepower to the rear axle if you wish. In two-wheel drive mode, it will roast its rear tyres in the most lurid power oversteer slides ever executed by an estate car.
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Mercedes-AMG GT C (2017-)
The AMG GT is one of the few new cars that can be described as beautiful. Plenty are striking, intimidating or arresting to look at, but few are genuinely gorgeous.
The mid-range GT C is the pick of the bunch. It’s far less punishing in everyday use than the hardcore GT R (never mind the outrageous Black Series), but unlike the GT and GT S variants that prop up the model range, the GT C gets the wider rear arches from higher-spec models, plus rear-wheel steering. That additional spread across the back adds a stack of visual muscle, while the active rear wheels make the car even sharper to drive.
The twin-turbo V8 is fearsomely powerful, of course, but it’s where it is positioned that really makes the difference. Raise the car’s long bonnet and you see how far back in the chassis the 550bhp motor is located, which gives the GT C much of the poise and balance of a mid-engined supercar.
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Mercedes-AMG G63 (2018-)
A perennial favourite with Premier League footballers, the G63 makes almost no rational sense whatsoever. A high-riding, off-road-biased SUV is a poor basis for a performance car at the best of times, but when it weighs almost two-and-a-half tonnes and is about as aerodynamic as a barn door, it’s pretty much hopeless.
Yet there’s something about the G63. Maybe it’s the incongruity of it all, but one squirt of the throttle pedal is all it takes to understand this particular AMG’s charms. The previous version was a complete no-hoper in the handling stakes, but this latest version – which, from a styling point of view, has been updated in a very sympathetic way – is way more sophisticated, meaning it does actually navigate corners quite well.
The G63 uses the same thumping twin-turbocharged V8 as the AMG GT two-seater, so it romps along at a staggering pace. If you see one in the rear-view mirror of your Porsche Boxster, you should pull over.
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Mercedes-AMG A45 S (2019-)
The A45 S is certainly a hatchback, and nobody could deny it’s potent enough to qualify as hot. But describing it as a hot hatchback woefully undersells the A45 S, because, with over 400bhp and more straight-line performance than an eighties supercar, it’s something more serious altogether. Mega-hatch just about covers it.
Price is another factor because, while a good hot hatch should be relatively affordable, at more than £50,000, the A45 S definitely isn’t. Mercedes-AMG has been building very fast hatchbacks for several years, but early models were one-dimensional and uninvolving to drive. This latest one is beautifully balanced, its suspension is supple in the manner of all the best driver’s cars and, with four-wheel drive, it is ferociously quick along a challenging stretch of road. Although for this sort of money, it really should be special.
All that lets the A45 S down is its cabin and overall feeling of integrity. For £35,000, the interior and build quality would be exceptional, but at this lofty price point, they’re merely adequate. Get behind the wheel and put your foot down, however, and you simply won't care.
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