Has any high-performance road car division made as much progress in two decades as Mercedes-AMG? And I'm not just talking the last two decades, but any 20-year period full stop. Throughout 2021, the Affalterbach firm will deliver 275 examples of the One hypercar, each costing £2m (before taxes) and powered by the same 1.6-litre turbocharged hybrid V6 that has so far propelled Lewis Hamilton to five Formula 1 world titles and Nico Rosberg to one.
Meanwhile, AMG's current road cars are without exception among the very best of their type. The A45 S is the finest hyper-hatch you can buy, while the E63 S rewrote the rule book for very fast saloons and estates. Meanwhile, the GT gives corresponding versions of the once peerless Porsche 911 more of a fright than they've probably ever had. Imagine that in 2001, when the flabby W210 E55 AMG was breathlessly heaving its way around the world's race tracks and back roads, sweatily keeping well out of the way of the vastly superior BMW E39 M5.
There had been hints of AMG's grander ambitions, not to mention its far greater engineering nous. The 25 road-going versions of the CLK GTR Le Mans racing car that Mercedes-Benz was obliged by homologation regulations to deliver just before the turn of the century were built by AMG (in partnership with contract engineering firm HWA), though they weren't badged accordingly.
Not too long after that, AMG produced 180 finely honed and delicately refined performance versions of the CLK. Conceived to celebrate the parent company's championship winning year in the DTM in 2003, the CLK DTM AMG was a 582hp thug that demonstrated how along with the fire, brimstone and eight-cylinder thunder we had grown accustomed to, AMG could also do poise and precision.
Then, in 2006, the Black Series label appeared, stuck in the first instance to the rump of an SLK55 AMG that ditched the standard car's intricate but heavy folding hardtop roof in favour of a fixed carbon fibre item. With the CLK DTM AMG and SLK55 AMG Black Series, Mercedes' go-faster division was busily educating itself on the finer details of steering precision, handling response, body control, gearbox shift speed and all the other things that had been conspicuously absent from its road cars to date.
For me, one of the most important milestones in that 20-year journey - from BMW M's public school fag to Germany's preeminent tuning department (and manufacturer of one of the most advanced road cars ever) - is the CLK63 AMG Black Series. It arrived in 2007, the second AMG to make use of the Black Series designation but, in my view, the first to really demonstrate what the engineers at Affalterbach were capable of.
It featured tracks that were wider than that of the standard CLK63 AMG, by some 75mm at the front and 66mm at the rear. Those wider tracks were clothed menacingly in heavily-flared arches of carbon fibre. The suspension arms were new, as were the far stiffer springs and manually adjustable dampers. The rear seats were ditched altogether and the base car's heated, motorised chairs junked in favour of fixed-back buckets. There was a bespoke aero package too, all of which led engineering boss Tobias Moers, recently installed as CEO at Aston Martin, to describe the car as AMG's most complete model yet.
What's it like to drive? You'll have to watch the video for the full assessment, but the CLK63 AMG Black Series is a hugely characterful and capable car that, alas, is still somewhat flawed. The lazy gearbox, the lifeless steering, the substantial kerbweight... What a shame it was to have set my alarm for 4am only to wake up to a raging storm. I was late meeting videographer Harry Rudd on our chosen Welsh hillside road because an enormous tree had been felled by the wind and discarded across a country lane, forcing me to go the long way around.
Harry deserves a huge amount of credit for capturing on camera - in the most horrid conditions, no less - all the drama and ferocity of the Black Series. It's a special car this, be in no doubt, one that played a pivotal role in Mercedes-AMG's remarkable turnaround.
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