Hodgman’s HAMMER
Blasting to StarTech 2013 in a vintage AMG rocket sled

Article & Photography by Gary Anderson


“Perfectly civilized, supremely confident, but ... holy Moses, we are catapulted instantly from 60 mph to 140 mph. Are you sure you can’t drive a car out from underneath yourself?” This is what Jean Lindamood, editor of Automobile Magazine, wrote 25 years ago when she first drove a deep blue AMG station wagon with the unassuming nickname, “The Hammer.”

Planning my trip to StarTech 2013 this year, when pre-merger AMG specialist Jonathan Hodgman suggested I might enjoy riding in that very car to and from Alabama for the event, I had to say yes. What a perfect way to travel to this technically focused event, in the only station wagon ever converted to AMG Hammer specifications. I would even have the chance to meet Hartmut Feyhl, now owner of RENNtech, who was transferred from AMG headquarters in Affalterbach, West Germany, as the technical head for the North American facility and did the mechanical work on the build.

Now having covered several hundred miles of freeway, backroads, and race track in the Hammer, I thoroughly understand what Lindamood meant. All these many years later, the Hammer station wagon is no less capable than it was in 1988 when she tested it before it was delivered to its first owner. Like a rocket sled from NASA’s Space Flight Center, it can still catapult from 60 mph well into three-digit speeds in the time it takes to say “holy Moses” three times.

With a car like this, to which the word “unique” can be accurately applied, there obviously is an interesting backstory. By 1985, the very independent wizards in that little country town north of Stuttgart had established the stock-in-trade that made the discreet initials AMG a mark of pride among discerning high-net-worth performance aficionados.  AMG was re-engineering Mercedes-Benz drivetrains to very high-performance standards, then inserting them back into Mercedes chassis that had been upgraded with better suspensions and brakes to manage the much higher horsepower of the AMG engines.

When the W124 chassis was introduced in 1985, AMG started inserting the available 5.6-liter M117 V-8 engine, with the quad-cam AMG heads of the company’s own design, re-engineered to produce 360 horsepower with the chassis upgraded to handle the power. Most upgrades included bigger brakes and high-performance struts, then taller 17-inch wheels, and a bespoke rear subframe and S-Class differential that could withstand the engine’s huge torque. The W124 bodies were then clothed in front, side, and rear body panels that covered the wider wheels in a subtle but powerful style that was appropriate to the clientele who ordered these cars.

An American journalist who drove one of the first examples said the car was about “as subtle as a hammer,” and the nickname – meaning exactly the same thing in both German and English – stuck. Within a year, the company incorporated it into its catalog. Over the course of the lifetime of that chassis and engine, the cult following that has collected around the Hammer agrees that 54 valid examples were built worldwide, though arguments still rage on forums over the question of exactly what combination of characteristics merits the name.

By the time the Hammer was introduced, Richard Buxbaum of AMG had established a beachhead in North America in the little town of Westmont, Illinois, near Chicago, where he was installing AMG-manufactured engines and performance upgrades into Mercedes cars for North American clients. In 1987, he built the one-off version of the Hammer shown on these pages that has gained almost-mythic status. A Canadian client who already owned several other AMG-converted Mercedes cars wanted something for his wife, who liked station wagons but didn’t like diesels – the only engines available in the utilitarian body style in North America at the time.

To satisfy his demanding client – and to garner a little attention for the small marque – Buxbaum took delivery of a nautical metallic blue 1987 300TD wagon with stock grey leather upholstery and carpets, and ordered a 6-liter dual overhead-cam M117 V-8 from Affalterbach, plus the appropriate performance and body kit parts.

But what everyone agrees with is that the most unusual Hammer of all was the one built in 1987 by a small team recruited by Buxbaum. To do the build, the team not only had to replace the diesel engine and transmission, but also had to rip out the entire diesel-specification electrical system. Because of the project’s complexity, Buxbaum brought over two AMG specialists from Affalterbach – an electrical wizard to do the rewiring, and a young mechanic by the name of Hartmut Feyhl to do the drivetrain swap.

Buxbaum couldn’t estimate the cost of the project or how long it would take, so he agreed to build the car for the cost of the diesel wagon plus time and materials. By the time Lindamood drove it, the final price the client paid was $190,000 – a significant amount of money in 1988 dollars for any automobile, much less an unassuming station wagon. With the extensive amount of custom labor required, by the time his team was finished, Buxbaum estimated he could have built four standard Hammer sedans, and later admitted  he lost money on the project.

Not only did the car have to be completely rewired – the only thing left of the original system was the diesel glow-plug light in the instrument cluster, hidden with a piece of black tape – the standard AMG exhaust system wouldn’t fit in a station wagon. A one-off exhaust system had to be designed, complete with a Porsche catalytic converter so it could pass emissions tests.

Finished just days before the annual gathering of AMG owners in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, at Road America in 1987 – for many owners, their only chance to enjoy the performance capabilities of their cars – the car was trailered from Westmont to be displayed and demonstrated at the event before the owner took delivery.

Feyhl shared the story that when the car was started, there was inadequate clearance for the custom headers against the firewall as the engine vibrated at idle, so overnight they lifted the engine out of the car and he used a hammer to pound enough clearance into the firewall so that the car could be driven. Even today, when the engine is first fired, a momentary thumping can be heard until the engine settles down into its throbby idle. 

After Lindamood drove the car as part of its final sign-off test and wrote her article in Automobile, the car was driven to its Canadian home, where we can assume it provided many happy supermarket trips for the hot-shoe spouse of the proud purchaser. In 1992, it surfaced once again when it was shipped back to Feyhl, who had independently established the RENNtech tuner company in Florida in 1989.

There Feyhl completed a full 50,000-mile service on the car even though it only had 25,000 miles on the odometer. He also replaced the characteristically kludgy hand-made steel AMG headers with a superior cast iron set, replaced the cams with a set that had greater duration and increased lift, European headlights and wipers, installed bigger brakes from the new 500E and an updated AMG body kit, and replaced the black AMG Aero I wheels with wider three-piece AMG/OZ wheels with modern-style body-colored centers on the car.

Once again, the car receded into the shadows until it was eventually sold in California through Beverly Hills Motoring, a company that the owner and his son had acquired as they tried to work their way out of a series of bad economic decisions. It was still in good drivable condition, obviously having been carefully stored and maintained, and the new owner installed a modern sound system to replace the Nakamichi system so he could get traffic reports during his commute in Los Angeles.

But like many gearheads, the new owner eventually saw something else he wanted instead, so the car was cleaned and serviced, then placed with Barrett-Jackson Auction Company to be sold at its 2010 Scottsdale, Arizona, auction. Enter Jonathan Hodgman, who by then had successfully established his specialist business in Atlanta, taking care of these idiosyncratic but mechanically satisfying pre-merger AMGs and later model high-performance products from Affalterbach.

For Hodgman, the car would be both a rolling advertisement of his specialty and a personally satisfying car to own and drive for fun. Hodgman knew the car would be relatively expensive by his standards – it was far and away the most he had ever spent on a car – but he was convinced it would be a good investment. With other members of the pre-merger AMG cult, he believes the cars exist in undeserved obscurity, a condition that can’t possibly last much longer with prices of unusual high-performance cars now trending strongly upward in the collector-car market.

Since acquiring the car, Hodgman said he’s had few surprises. Of course the car suffered from deferred maintenance on all wearable items, needed many new gaskets, bushings, hoses, fluids, spark plugs and wires, and upgraded brake hoses and pads. He’s made one major performance modification, swapping out the short 3.27 rear end that was designed for performance off the line for a 2.24 that is much more comfortable at modern freeway speeds. This change was the equivalent of gaining an overdrive and losing a first gear that was too short for what even modern performance tires could handle.

Hodgman also noted that with the upgrades RENNtech installed in the mid-1990s and the lower differential ratio, the original performance specs had improved. Originally rated at 375 horsepower with a gearing-limited top speed of 145 mph, the car now produces more than 410 horsepower. Hodgman said that while traveling through his own private “Area 51” – with his father in the passenger seat manning the GPS readout – he has reached a measured speed well in excess of original AMG specifications.

We certainly had absolutely no difficulty in quickly dispatching the distance from Hodgman’s shop in Lilburn, Georgia, northeast of Atlanta, to the StarTech hotel in Birmingham, and then with three passengers aboard, maneuvering quickly through Birmingham freeway rush-hour traffic each day to the MBUSI facility in Vance, Alabama.

Looking at the car, one can’t help but notice the crudeness with which some of the secondary work was done in the engine compartment, but as Hodgman says, “These were much more race cars than they were street cars, and were built with the same attitude: It was performance that mattered, not so much chassis cosmetics.”

One particular note in that department: The air conditioner does not work and it isn’t anywhere near the top of Hodgman’s current punch list. When the AMG engine was installed, the air conditioner hoses had to be completely rerouted, so the mechanics pulled the old molded hoses and installed one-size-fits-all clamp-end hoses, which have long since lost their ability to hold Freon. But Hodgman said he prefers to drive with the windows down anyway, so he can enjoy the sound of that incredible 6-liter V-8. He’ll repair the unusual pickled-finish bird’s-eye maple dashboard veneer that Buxbaum installed at the request of the first owner, as the crack that has formed where the dash was drilled by some ham-handed high school kid to accept an aftermarket alarm light is just unacceptable.

“The car is unique, and offers incredible performance, so I drive it for fun and probably will keep right on doing so,” Hodgman said. “It’s never going to be a white-glove show car as long as I own it.” Nevertheless, wherever it was parked at StarTech, the car never failed to draw a crowd to peer under the hood at the monster engine and marvel at the peculiar absurdity of what must have been the world’s fastest grocery-getter of its time.
Was this car a predictor of the future? The current offerings of high-performance wagons and the premium they command might lead you to think so.
 
Opposite page: At StarTech we posed the 1987 AMG 300 Hammer Wagon in front of the SR71 supersonic surveillance jet at the Huntsville U.S. Rocket & Space Flight Center, – both vehicles were designed to perform at the edge of the speed and handling envelope of their time. This page, clockwise from upper left: The AMG-built M117 dual-overhead cam engine shoehorned into the space previously occupied by a mundane diesel engine. The rear view of the purposive vehicle with the dual exhausts discreetly tucked beneath the AMG body panels. Anywhere the hood was raised, the car drew a crowd. Owner Jonathan Hodgman looking at home in the car with his test-pilot mien.
 
This page, counterclockwise from upper left: The interior of the Hammer Wagon looks more like the functional wagon that it had been than the functional supercar it became. The Mercedes and AMG emblems on the car, including the  star on the hood and the big Mercedes grille, are all discreetly overpainted in body color. The original review of this car, written by editor Jean Lindamood in the January 1988 issue of Automobile Magazine. Opposite page: While visiting the Space Flight Center in Huntsville, we photographed the car in front of the full-size display version of the Saturn V rocket used for the moon launch.
 
1987 AMG Hammer Wagon

Body Type:
Front-engine, rear-wheel-drive wagon
7-passenger, 4-door steel body
Powertrain:
32-valve DOHC 5,956cc V-8
375 hp (now estimated at 410 hp)
Transmission:
4-speed automatic
Wheels and Tires:
245x40 17-inch front/rear Yokohama Neova AD07
Brakes: retrofitted 1992 500E
Wheelbase: 110.2 in
Curb weight: 3,900 lb
Fuel capacity: 21.4 gal
Performance:
Original top speed – 145 mph
Estimated top speed now – 186+ mph
Zero-60 mph now – who cares?
60-130 mph – three holy Moses
Original price in 1988: $190,000