| Retro Drive | Top Gear Test Track, England | 1986 Mercedes-Benz 300E 'Hammer' AMG |
Top Gear's test track surface in the rain is quite a place. It's simply glass-like, which isn't ideal when there's 397bhp being driven through the rear wheels with no electronic safety nets. The 518bhp
E 63 AMG with all its traction and stability systems is a cinch in comparison; this car, the infamous AMG Hammer needs a little more respect.
In the Metal
The W124 Mercedes-Benz is a classically proportioned luxury saloon. The three-box shape, with its clearly defined lines, looks so simple and pure compared to the edgier, more obviously styled lines of its E 63 AMG relative. AMG's detailing was remarkably restrained, especially when you consider this car arrived in 1986: the Hammer gained a lower body kit, a rear wing on the boot lid and a matte-effect front grille that has lost its three-pointed star on top.
What you get for your Money
Back in the shoulder-padded, fleck pastel-suited day when the Hammer was on sale it'd have cost you a not insubstantial £50,000 for the 5.6-litre version. The actual price for the 6.0-litre car is a mystery, though we've seen £112,000 quoted - if you add all the options AMG offered then this figure is not completely unrealistic. A quick adjusted for inflation calculation (okay, an online equivalency calculator) pegs the Hammer's price today at about £230,000. Ouch. It's hardly surprising so few were built; a BMW M5 back in the day would have cost you about £31,000 and a Ferrari Testarossa £63,000. This was a car for those whom money really didn't matter then.
Driving it
We've only minutes in this pristine example, but with a surface soaked in standing water and all the myth surrounding the Hammer's performance that's perhaps no bad thing. Sixty is said to arrive in about 5.6 seconds (you'd have needed a Lamborghini Countach to match that in '86) though it doesn't feel that quick now. Compared to the E 63 AMG it's slow to respond, the acceleration nowhere near as intense. It's only on the move that its Hammer name takes on purpose, the 6.0-litre V8 picking up pace with real intensity, the 190mph claimed top speed not sounding too ridiculous. It's surprisingly friendly though, the acceleration feeling more like the torque rich delivery of a modern turbodiesel than the fizzing, high-rev V8s in AMG's models today. The steering is nicely weighty - and surprisingly feelsome - and the automatic gearbox shifts through its four ratios lazily but smoothly.
The ride is tidy on the few bumps we encountered and it feels rock solid at speed, as you might expect. There's little in the way of memorable soundtrack though, the predominant noise in the cabin when the speed is rising is the increasing amount of wind roar. It's feeling its age then, but is still clearly a quick car, even if the recent development of performance saloons really does make its 397bhp output look conservative - 500bhp is now the minimum price of entry into super-saloon-dom these days. It must have felt incredible back in the eighties though, when a Ferrari Testarossa was getting around 390bhp from its flat-twelve.
Worth Noting
All the numbers associated with the Hammer are huge: 6.0-litres, that insane potential £112,000 price tag and its 190mph top speed. The number of examples produced is unsurprisingly somewhat smaller, the Hammer being built for a handful of wealthy speed freaks. What's amazing is that it was faster through the gears than just about anything on the road, including cars like Lamborghini's Countach, but yet it delivers its performance with surprising civility, feeling significantly less potent today thanks to the recent lunatic output numbers coming from supersaloons.
Summary
A brief drive in a legend is never to be passed up and the Hammer certainly fills the criteria. For a 20-year-old car it feels tight and fast, if not in the league of performance we'd anticipated given its reputation. Perhaps the first real supersaloon, the Hammer is certainly responsible for helping create a very specific genre of cars that exist to this day.
