Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
The 1995 Mercedes-Benz C36 AMG we featured last month is back up for sale, it’s price having been lowered by $1,000. Some may prefer the M badged cars from Munich, but these early post-merger AMGs are an interesting and rare alternative to the M3s of the era.
The Mercedes-Benz C43 AMG carried on the tradition of jamming a big engine into a modest package to produce big time performance. The more I delve into AMG history, however, I am intrigued by the C43’s predecessor, the C36 AMG. This was AMG’s first in-house collaboration with Mercedes-Benz. While it may be down on horsepower, it’s a rarer find than the V8 variants that succeeded it. We featured a final year C36 AMG earlier this month, but here is a low mileage black example for sale in Wisconsin.
Want to go fast but be stealth about it? Mercedes-Benz AMG models have always been a great way to have practicality mixed with insane amounts of power, but today’s models are a bit more telling on their outward appearance with regards to their mission. Their forebears were a bit more conservative, though. Witness this 1997 Mercedes-Benz C36 AMG for sale in Florida with less than 60k miles on the clock. This year was the rarest for what was the first AMG collaboration after the tuner was brought in-house by Mercedes, with only 236 units produced.
There’s always some debate when an E36 BMW M3 equipped with an automatic gearbox appears on GCFSB. Seems like an out of place option, but I’ve become more accepting of it as I age. A sign that I’m going soft? Perhaps. A bit further north of BMWs home turf, Mercedes-Benz was busy with AMG in the mid-1990s creating their first official in-house collaboration after the company absorbed the tuning firm a few years earlier. Available only with a 4-speed automatic gearbox, the C36 AMG was not what you would call a direct successor to the famous Cosworth tuned 190Es, but it took that prior concept in a more luxury oriented direction per the 500E/E500 formula. This C36 for sale in Arizona has a reasonable 77,000 miles on the clock and is a good way to enjoy your speed discreetly.
Usually the first of anything in the automotive world is rather revered. The BMW E30 M3, Audi UrQuattro and Porsche 930 Turbo come to mind. These are cars that moved the chains in the automotive performance world and as a result, are prized in the collector market today. But when it comes to high performance at Mercedes-Benz, the timeline is a little murky. From Hammers to the Porsche built 500E/E500, there were attempts from a bunch of different parties to make a fast Mercedes until the tuner AMG was absorbed as an in-house entity in the early 1990s.
This C36 AMG for sale in Arizona represents the beginning of the official relationship between Mercedes and AMG. Compared to later AMG hardware, not many of these C36s arrived stateside and it’s hard to find ones that have been lightly used. This silver one has a reasonable 77,000 miles on the clock and is the perfect Q-ship for someone who wants just a little more comfort than what the BMW E36 M3 provides.