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AMG Celebrates 50th Anniversary With Japan-Only G63 Special Edition

On a fateful day in 1967, former Mercedes-Benz engineers Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher founded AMG in a little-ish town near Stuttgart, Germany. Nine years later, the outfit moved to Affalterbach, and the rest, as they say, is history in the making.
Mercedes-AMG G63 50th Anniversary (Japan-spec model) 7 photos
Photo: Daimler AG
Mercedes-AMG G63 50th Anniversary (Japan-spec model)Mercedes-AMG G63 50th Anniversary (Japan-spec model)Mercedes-AMG G63 50th Anniversary (Japan-spec model)Mercedes-AMG G63 50th Anniversary (Japan-spec model)Mercedes-AMG G63 50th Anniversary (Japan-spec model)Mercedes-AMG G63 50th Anniversary (Japan-spec model)
The year was 1999 when Daimler bought the controlling stake in AMG, and thus, Mercedes-AMG was born. With business going better than ever, the three-pointed star couldn’t miss the chance to celebrate 50 years since the mad professors over at AMG set up shop. The biggest surprise in store for 2017 is the advent of the Project One, a very expensive F1-inspired hybrid hypercar.

Mercedes, however, has plenty more surprises in store for the rest of its lineup. The G63 50th Anniversary Edition is one of those, and for whatever reason, it’s exclusive to Japan. The limited-run series consists of 50 vehicles painted in designo Mauritius Blue. Black detailing is on the visual menu as well.

The only area where the customer has a word to say is the interior. Here you’ll find plenty of AMG goodies, carbon fiber included, but the upholstery color is a different matter. Four flavors are available, and these are black, Porcelain, Mocha Brown, and Saddle Brown. And as expected from a G63, the seats and door cards are spruced up with diamond stitching.

Care to guess how much Mercedes-AMG of Japan wants on a single unit of the G63 50th Anniversary Edition? Including the consumption tax, the squared-off bruiser flaunts a starting price of 22,200,000 yen. In U.S. currency, that’s $194,850 at current exchange rates. And for reference, that many yen can buy you no less than 26 units of the all-new Daihatsu Mira e:S kei car.

The powertrain of this variant of the W463 G-Class is centered around a 5.5-liter twin-turbo V8. Codenamed M157, the eight-cylinder force-fed monster develops 571 PS (420 kW) and 760 Nm (560 lb-ft) of torque, with all that oomph kept in check by the AMG Speedshift Plus seven-speed automatic tranny.

Soon enough, an all-new generation of the G-Class will replace the W463.
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About the author: Mircea Panait
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After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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