Behind every AMG engine, there is a person who built it
AFFALTERBACH, GERMANY Surrounded by fields of green and a smattering of fruit trees not far from Stuttgart, Germany, in what feels like the middle of nowhere, lies an orderly sweep of low-slung buildings. Here, in this high-tech, high security and well fenced property, is the inner sanctum of high performance vehicles from Mercedes. It’s where AMG cars get their DNA.
Not just a place where engines are assembled for Mercedes’ AMG cars, the complex at Affalterbach employs some 1,700 people, about 70 per cent of them engineers deeply involved in plans for cars that might someday wear an AMG badge, even racing cars, developing everything from aerodynamics to exhaust notes. Once considered an “in-house tuning arm” of Mercedes, AMG is now a wholly-owned division of Daimler’s MercedesBenz, and the Affalterbach headquarters is steeped in total car development, improving on cars that Mercedes once considered impossible to better.
Of those 1,700 people, about 180 are the engine builders who took four years of training to get here, and who, in a way, are more like surgeons of iron, deftly assembling hundreds of parts into what will ultimately become the beating heart of an AMG vehicle, whether that’s a AMG- GT S Roadster or the off-road G-Wagon.
Inside the brightly lit AMG engine shop, each engine builder methodically and studiously tends to the construction of an engine, moving it about on a waist-high trolley from one part station to the next, reaching for air wrenches and other tools that hang from the ceiling. Each technician handles every step of the build, from installing the crankshaft and its bearings into the polished V8 block (all while ensuring the correct torque of the bolts) to applying twin BorgWarner turbochargers.
When he is finished, he will apply his signature to the engine cover, like a piece of artwork, in a shop that is as neat and tidy as any hospital operating room.
Every step of the build on every single engine is recorded on computers right from each tool, from whether the bolts are tight enough to the quality of piezo-electric direct fuel injectors, a full documentation that might hold the solution to a problem should one occur many years from today. AMG’s sophisticated factory computer system monitors and checks every sequence, allowing the builder to continue only if every step has been green-lighted perfectly. It is not possible, says Mercedes, to make a mistake, even though no robots put these engine together, just hardened human hands.
Likewise, every single part is inventoried and tracked. When I pick up a connecting rod from a rack holding dozens of them and admire it in my hands, it is as though I am handling a live kidney, the nervousness of those around me clearly evident.
Until recently, all these builders were men, fitting for the familiar marketing slogan “one man, one engine” that Mercedes uses to promote its AMG line of vehicles that stretch from the A-Class to the S-Class. But times have changed. Four women now assemble engines among these exclusive walls.
If the builder falls sick or has to be away, his or her engine will sit off to the side, under a cover until the builder returns, even if that delay happens to be months. “One man, one engine” might be dating itself because of the gender used, but it’s not just advertising.
Indeed, each builder can produce two engines a day, and the plant is currently running two eight-hour shifts. Although each engine is tested before it leaves the plant, spun at 3,000 rpm in a special chamber, the first time the engine is started and runs on its own power is when it sits within the AMG car for which it destined. Every engine that leaves Affalterbach goes to a car that is already sold.
Affalterbach supplies fully assembled V8 engines to Mercedes’ assembly plants around the world (as well as to Aston Martin for the DB11). There are no V6s assembled here, and V12 engines, which were originally built here, are now assembled in Mannheim, in southwestern Germany. And not just for Mercedes, but for ultra-luxury clients such as Pagani, which produces the Zonda. One Zonda engine takes two days to build.
AMG, named after former Mercedes-Benz engineers Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher (A for Aufrecht, M for Melcher, G for Grossaspach, Aufrecht’s birth town) got its real start as a small engine forge that took its chances when it stuffed a loud and powerful 6.8-L V8 engine into a Mercedes 300 SEL (nicknamed the Red Pig ) and took a surprise second-place win overall in the 1971 24 Hours of Spa in Belgium.
In 1976, AMG was but a dozen employees in a small workshop and office in Affalterbach. Today, this AMG facility develops many of the most coveted high performance cars and engines on the planet. And all in the middle of nowhere.