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As you will have read elsewhere on the site, AMG have just given us another superb car: the rather delicious E63. So we thought we'd look back at some of the tuners that didn't manage to pique Mercedes' interest enough to get the ultimate stamp of approval - incorporation into the company.

AMG wasn't always part of Mercedes-Benz, you see. Originally, it was an aftermarket tuner founded in '67 by former Benz engineers Hans Werner Aufrechy and Erhard Melcher. After developing some pretty serious racers - and a few bolt-ons for MB's lineup - Mercedes were suitably impressed. In 1990, AMG linked up with Daimler-Benz, swapping the use of Benz's dealer network for the development of performance variants.