According to a report by Car and Driver, Mercedes-Benz will soon be rebranding all its AMG Sports variants to simply AMG. AMG Sport was only recently created to fill the gap between standard Mercedes luxury vehicles and the full-blooded AMG speed machines. However the huge variety of new models and variants has led to a lot of confusion and to simplify things, the German giant has decided to take a sensible step of categorizing its cars under just 2 main umbrellas rather than 3; a luxury oriented line of cars sold as standard Mercedes' or sports tuned variants sold under the high-performance AMG brand name.
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Rather having to deal with a line of luxury, sports, and luxury-sports cars, Mercedes will now simply group all AMG Sport cars under the AMG banner. The fill-gap AMG Sport range of cars that have already been introduced will continue to be sold. However instead of being referred to as AMG Sport versions, they will instead come bearing a 43 (A43, C43) number tag much like how the more powerful variants are referred to by their 63 tags (S63, E63, etc). The first sign of the company moving towards this switch was seen when the AMG variant of the SLC was christened the SLC43 despite it sharing its 3.0-litre V6 engine with the GLE 450 AMG Sport and the C 450 AMG Sport. Other AMG models feature larger 4.0-litre V8 power units. Car and Driver also suggested that the C450 AMG would be the first of the AMG Sport range to bear the new 43 badging and would instead be called the Mercedes-AMG C43. The upcoming E-Class based AMG version, which will likely be called the Mercedes-AMG E43, will use the same V6 engine unit found in the C43.
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It is also interesting to note that the evolution of the internal combustion engine has now led to the day where the 63 numbering, which was originally attached to AMG branded cars, as well as the newly coined 43 numbering, no longer refer to engine displacement. Up until 2014, all cars bearing the 63 AMG badging came equipped with mammoth naturally aspirated 6.2-litre V8s which were replaced with more economical and efficient biturbo 4.0-litre V8s due to the increasing pressure of governments on auto manufacturers to cut down on emissions and fuel consumption. The numbers no longer match up and only exist to give structure to the company's nomenclature policy.
