Mercedes Rolls Out AMG 'Light' Models to Compete With Audi S Lineup
If you’re scratching your head over the high-performance designations from certain luxury brands, Mercedes figures to become just as confusing. The brand’s AMG performance badge will grace bona fide AMG cars complete with hand-built engines from Mercedes’ Affalterbach plant in southern Germany. But Mercedes will also bequeath the name to AMG-light cars from its mass-market plants as “AMG Sport.” You know, in case the brand’s recent naming overhaul wasn’t complicated enough.
Related: 2016 Mercedes-Benz GLE Coupe: First Look
The first example is the GLE-Class, a coupelike SUV similar to the BMW X6. Once production ramps up, you’ll be able to buy a Mercedes-Benz GLE450 AMG Sport or, for all-out performance, a Mercedes-AMG GLE63. Mercedes also replaced the short-lived C400 sedan with the C450 AMG Sport, and it’s all but inevitable that we’ll see a Mercedes-AMG C63 at some point.
The AMG sub-brand was expected. We reported in November 2014 that Mercedes owner Daimler would relaunch its Maybach and AMG brands with Benz-free nomenclature — respectively, Mercedes-Maybach and Mercedes-AMG. Both initiatives have born fruit: the Mercedes-Maybach S600 sedan and Mercedes-AMG GT sports car.
The AMG multiplication came as a surprise.
In press materials, Mercedes calls it an effort to bring AMG to “an even broader target group.” It’s also the latest example of the auto industry following itself: At Lexus, you’ll soon find the GS 350 F Sport alongside the full-blown GS F. Audi can sell you the A5 S Line, the S5 or the RS 5. And BMW showrooms have the 435i M Sport and the M4. (Or the 228i M Sport and the M235i, but not the M2.)
Mercedes, it seems, will now have several flavors of AMG.
“Mercedes-Benz AMG Sport models are a new positioning point that M-B has never participated in,” spokesman Chris Bokich explained via email. “It is in line with Audi S4/S5/S6/S7/S8 models or BMW M Sport models. The official titles will have AMG Sport on them, but we will usually shorten them to say GLE450 Coupe or C450 sedan.”
Those won’t just be rebadged versions of cars that previously had the largest engines in the model range, Bokich promised.
“There will be chassis differences, so the cars will deliver on differentiation visually and also dynamically,” he said. “They’ll have the AMG looks [and] really crisp handling.”
Expect Mercedes-AMG models to spread, too.
“Mercedes-AMG models are the full AMG models with hand-built engines from Affalterbach that we have always known,” Bokich said. “The full nomenclature change on the cars and titles will happen by this fall.”
Manufacturer images
Editor’s note: This post was updated on Feb. 3, 2016, to correct the spelling of Mercedes-Benz spokesman Chris Bokich.
