7 Mercedes-AMG Cars You Didn’t Know Existed

Mercedes-AMG is one of the world’s foremost makers of silly, noisy, smoky performance cars. As a result, it’s produced some properly legendary cars over the years – the original 6.2-litre C63, the A45 mega-hatch, the stunning gullwing-doored SLS, various loveably daft G-Wagens… all that’s before you even get to the sensational Black Series cars.

But over the years, both in its early days as an independent tuner and its latter period as a Merc subsidiary, there’ve been a number of AMG-tweaked cars that have escaped the wider public’s attention too. We’ve picked out seven you (probably) didn’t know existed.

Mercedes C32 AMG Sport Coupe

A small supercharged V6 hatchback sending 349bhp to the rear wheels sounds like catnip for enthusiasts, so it’s a little surprising the C32 AMG Sport Coupe isn’t a cult classic. Perhaps it’s because the CL203 C-Class Sport Coupe was such a bizarre and gawky-looking thing with its odd bobtail rear. Perhaps it’s also because while the C32 AMG had a meaty 3.2-litre supercharged V6, it only came with a sluggish five-speed automatic. 

The most likely reason, though, is that the C32 Sport Coupe was only available as a special order model during 2002 and 2003, and very few people went for it. Either way, if you’re ever at a particularly weird pub quiz and get asked what the first Mercedes hot hatch was, now you know it wasn’t the A45 AMG.

Mercedes C30 CDI AMG

Also hailing from the era of the blobby W203 C-Class was this, and yes, that ‘D’ does stand for what you think it does. The C30 CDI is indeed the only full-fat AMG model ever to come with a diesel engine (post AMG’s full takeover by Mercedes anyway, but more on that in a bit).

Said engine was a 3.0-litre five-cylinder turbodiesel making 228bhp and 398lb ft, and you could get the C30 as a saloon, estate, or even that weird Sport Coupe we were just talking about. It was never sold in the UK, and it didn’t have much of a chance in Europe either, being dropped in 2004 after less than three years on sale.

Mercedes R63 AMG

The Mercedes R-Class was a weird car in its own right, a posh, low-roofed people carrier with seating for up to seven.

The decision to offer a fully-fledged AMG version, complete with the company’s shiny new 6.2-litre 503bhp V8, however, took the cake for sheer strangeness. With that snarly V8 paired with four-wheel drive and seven seats, it actually sounds like quite an appealing do-it-all package these days, providing you can stomach fuel costs similar to those of the average airliner.

Good luck finding one, though – available only for the 2006 model year, Merc apparently shifted a grand total of 12 of these in the UK.

Mercedes SLS AMG Electric Drive

Yes, you may well remember Jeremy Clarkson skidding a lime green electric SLS AMG around Dunsfold alongside the fearsome Black Series. But did you know the SLS AMG Electric Drive actually went into production?

Considering it was produced in 2013, when the Tesla Model S had only just made people realise EVs didn’t have to be miserable penalty boxes, it was rather ahead of its time. With a quartet of electric motors, one for each wheel, it had clever torque vectoring tech, a decade before it started getting journalists all frothy in stuff like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, and delivered a mighty 740bhp.

Evidently, it was a bit too ahead of its time, with apparently a mere nine sold. Still, when Mercedes-AMG’s standalone EV arrives later this year, remember it wasn’t quite the first battery-powered car to come from Affalterbach.

Mercedes G63 AMG V12

This isn’t to be confused with the V8-powered G63 you can buy today, nor the hilarious V12-powered G65 that certain markets got in the 2010s. No, AMG crammed a V12 in the boxy G-Wagen once before, back in 2002 when Mercedes had a controlling stake in it but wasn’t yet the sole owner.

Badged the G63 thanks to its 6.3-litre naturally aspirated 437bhp V12, very little is known about this model. That’s because it was never officially offered to the public, but only to loyal and wealthy AMG customers carefully selected by Merc itself. It even came with the option of a bizarre long-wheelbase four-door body.

Supposedly, only five were built, and one that had belonged to the royal family of Dubai was sold at an RM Sotheby's auction in 2024 for around £310,000.

Mercedes MB100 AMG

We’ve covered diesel AMGs and ones with the ability to carry more people than usual, but what about a combination of those two things? Meet the MB100 AMG, a curiosity from AMG’s days as an independent tuner.

The MB100 was a van-stroke-minibus produced by Merc’s Spanish subsidiary, and it was the second generation that got an inexplicable AMG-ification in the late ’80s. It got a sporty exterior makeover and an interior kitted out with plush leather seats and the finest on-board video and telephone tech the ’80s could offer. Crucially, though, AMG fitted a pair of uprated turbodiesel engines – a 2.4-litre four-cylinder or 3.0-litre five-cylinder. ‘Uprated’ is a stretch, mind – they were still making just 98 or 127bhp, respectively.

Mitsubishi Galant AMG

No, your eyes do not deceive you. Back before it was fully taken over by Merc, AMG didn’t exclusively fettle cars with the three-pointed star on them. Its most memorable deviation into other manufacturers was the Mitsubishi Galant AMG which, along with a styling makeover, got 168bhp and an 8000rpm redline from its nat-asp 2.0-litre four-cylinder.

Elsewhere, AMG tweaked the South African-market Honda Ballade (essentially a posher Civic) in the late ’90s, before fully consolidating its relationship with Mercedes.