The “Hammer” was a legend born in top-speed shootouts in magazines. It was the stuff of dreams; a sedate sedan running toe-to-toe with Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Porsches. At the heart of the this performance was not a high-revving V12 or turbocharged flat-6 with ridiculous boost, but an enlarged version of the M119 motor sporting twin cams and 32 valves. The result? 376 horsepower and 428 ft. lbs of torque, or at least that’s what they reported – the motor ultimately may have exceeded 400 horsepower. In 1990, that was about as close to F40 performance as you could get – and they came with supercar pricetags, sometimes exceeding $200,000 and making them very rare. It was available in many different forms, from the E-Class Coupe to the S-Class in either sedan or coupe, as well as a smattering of early 500SLs. While today’s examples of the AMG 6.0s are both cars we’ve previously written up, I thought it would be interesting to compare the two. There’s been a lot of attention focused on not only 1980s tuner cars but in particular limited production AMG models recently, so what has that done to the market?
