Mercedes-AMG "Hammer" (W124)
Why 3.6: AMG's first V8 swap into a W124 body turned a mid-size Mercedes into a 375hp autobahn missile — the car that built AMG's reputation before Mercedes bought the company. Auction results now clear $600k+; nobody who owns one drives it to the shops.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €172k (1987) → €552k (2026), trending up · illustrative data
The long version
AMG built the Hammer by hand before AMG was a Mercedes subsidiary, stuffing a 5.6 or 6.0-litre V8 pulled from the S-Class parts bin into a 300E body and selling it through AMG's own network rather than a Mercedes dealer. Only a few dozen were built worldwide, roughly a dozen for the US, which means the ownership pool today is almost entirely museum-adjacent collectors rather than drivers. Auction results have gone from six figures to north of $700,000 in the last five years, a curve that took an unassuming Q-ship sedan and turned it into a vault asset. The car that proved a torquey V8 in an anonymous body could out-drag a Porsche now mostly proves how fast collector money can find an origin story.