This is the B55, a silly one-off project by workers at Mercedes’ Rastatt plant that involved shoving an old “55” AMG engine into a new B-Class, running a driveshaft through the “sandwich floor” and hooking it up to an old E-Class wagon rear axle. The result: 383 HP, a 0-60 time in the 5 second range, and what Autocar terms “surprisingly mature dynamic properties.” Possibly even more surprisingly, the whole project was done without a lick of help from the nutters at AMG, and required no frame modifications. Best of all is how comfortingly old-school the project is: the days of turning an FWD compact car into a V8 RWD beast are rapidly drawing to a close. Need proof? For the next-generation of A/B-Class, AMG is going in a very different direction, creating an “A25 AMG” which will use a two liter turbocharged four-banger, putting around 300 HP through a dual-clutch transmission and Haldex AWD. This “STI by AMG” will doubtless be infinitely more practical, efficient and useable than the B55’s old-school V8/RWD setup… but more than a few gearheads will be sad to see these kinds of unhinged anachronisms ride off into the sunset.
A killer B. Pity it wasn’t made for a racing series then it might have shown up as a homolagation special.
Betch it’s a hoot to drive.
they need to do things like this inorder to race sundays & sell mondays.
should it be a little more faster than 5 secs?
a B body got to be much lighter than an E body.
How is this “Silly”?
It is never as silly as FWD.
At least that crazy B-Class mashup drives the correct wheels.
I doubt an A-Class AWD will make many inroads against the STi/Evo or even the A3 Quattro.
Of course they’re moving to a turbo four; how else will they leverage the advertisement value and trickle-down tech to come from the switch to four-cylinders in Formula One?
This is NOT an AMG motor, it’s a MB 5.5 liter standard motor. This has nothing to do with anything AMG. Pure speculation on the part of the author. The story is in the Euro media and is much more accurate than this TTAC “news” story.