German Car Zone

AMG ends horsepower war
12 January 2009

AMG is actively pursing a lower emissions policy for its future cars, the company has confirmed.

“The horsepower war is over,” said AMG boss Volker Mornhinweg.

“We are going to use other ways to extract better performance, including weight saving, engine optimisation and alternative technologies,” the head of Merc's performance division told Autocar.

Mornhinweg said that the new Mercedes E63 AMG, due to be seen later this year, would be the first beneficiary of weight-saving technologies.

The new Mercedes E63 AMG will be lighter than the outgoing model and have the option of the manual wet-clutch gearbox first seen on the SL63, in order to provide more grunt with better economy.

Mornhinweg confirmed that the company was looking at producing a smaller AMG model.

“Mercedes is developing a new platform below the C-class which has possibilities,” he said. This raises speculation that AMG is plotting a hot version of the next Mercedes A-class, which will be available as a coupe.

The AMG boss also hinted that diesel, hybrid and four-cylinder petrol models could also be on the cards, but that they would not be off-the-shelf solutions. They would have to be engineered to match the characteristics that customers expect from AMG.


Link: Autocar - AMG ends horsepower war

Well...I hope they still keep things torquy...I mean toasty.

Very glad to hear that

Cool.. im excited for the future

No more Torquey, Monster V12s.

But, I know Mercedes has something good comming up, so I'm not that upset. The AMG owners at MBworld are freaking out. LOL

Whats replacing the Biturbo V12? Twin-Turbo V8s?

I'm so worried. Audi is about to win the HP war. Shit

^yep TT V8´s..

Its come to that point where these AMG´s are so damn fast that there is no room left for making them quicker by adding HP..
other than building a car from scratch..and that not AMG´s game..

Instead they will focus on these other aspects.. which then will lead to improved handling and so on..

To me this is nothing BUT good news

Forced Induction V8s my friend...Things will still be torquey, if not as torquey as the monster V12s.

never thought the day would come so soon. Great news though to see Merc being serious about weight shedding.

BMW has been saving weight for their M cars for some while now. By the way, Audi said they were ending the horsepower war a couple of years ago but we all know it didnt happen (RS6,R8). So we can't be 100% certain that Mercedes is ending it just because they say so.