Quote:
Bilal Siddiqui said:
RC, there is a certain patriotism in your post when you defend AMG.

Nice to see, even though you may have had bad experiences of their cars and don't like the driving feel, its good to see you put your foot down.




PS, RC, you weren't being sarcastic were you, like Fritz was implying?



No patriotism. If I like a car, I say it, if not, I say it too.
And no, no sarcasm, I meant the . It is easy to bash a car one doesn't know. I drove almost all current AMG models and I really like some and some less.
AMG builds fine cars, no doubt about it. They only have one major problem: Mercedes is too much involved in development, setup and sales strategy.
I actually admire Mercedes for what they achieved over the past few years, raising an "old" and boring car brand to new heights by introducing a fresh design and some innovations.
However: they forgot about quality in this process, the so called "bullet proof" Mercedes quality doesn't seem to exist anymore and this is very sad.
AMG should lower weight on the cars they get from Mercedes, they should improve traction by installing a limited slip differential as a standard option (or even a 4-matic system) and they should definetely remove that numb steering feel and understand that there is no fun in not really feeling the street. If AMG states they build sports cars (or sports sedans, sports coupes, sports roadsters or whatever...), they have to improve sportiness. A lot of AMG Mercedes owners seem to think that a Porsche for example doesn't have any ride comfort and the noise level is horrible. How suprised are many of them if they find out they were wrong. I AM a hardcore Porsche addict and I'm even more now after owning a Mercedes E55 AMG. But I still enjoy our family ML55 and my wife's SLK 32, even if today I accelerated and I just got a hit in my back with a flashing ESP light in the speedo. Apparently a SLK 32 and winter tires are a pretty bad combo regarding traction. Did I mention that I almost made an accident because of that? I expected traction and fast forward movement and all I got was a lousy T-shirt...oops...hit in my back. If AMG doesn't do anything about traction, they'll loose a lot of potential customers in the future. A sports car can't be fun without sufficient traction, especially when the ESP jumps in all the time. BTW: we had 6-12 *C today and completely dry streets.

And a last word for AMG bashers: AMG builds very interesting cars and to a certain level, they're really fun. We really should try to view AMG cars as sporty cars but not sports cars. This is maybe the mistake we all make when discussing AMG models.