This is a 1984 Mercedes-Benz 500 SEL 5.0 AMG nicknamed “Blueberry.” It was built in secret for AMG North America founder and CEO Richard Buxbaum under the personal supervision of Hans Werner Aufrecht – Aufrecht being the “A” in “AMG.”
Blueberry was built long before Daimler-Benz bought AMG in the late 1990s. These early pre-acquisition AMGs are particularly appealing to collectors – and this one has a far more interesting history than most, tying together both AMG’s German operations, and their all-important American export market.
Fast Facts – The Mercedes 500 SEL 5.0 AMG “Blueberry”
- This 1984 Mercedes-Benz 500 SEL 5.0 AMG, nicknamed “Blueberry,” was built in secret for AMG North America founder Richard Buxbaum. Its build was overseen personally by AMG founder Hans Werner Aufrecht.
- AMG, founded by Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher in 1967, started as a racing engine company before becoming a major modifier of Mercedes-Benz cars. In the 1980s, AMG began developing both road and race cars, eventually leading to a cooperation agreement with Mercedes in 1993 and an acquisition in 1999.
- “Blueberry” was commissioned by Richard Buxbaum after discussing the difficulty of finding a Mercedes 500 SEL in good colors. It was modified with a custom Orion Grey leather interior, upgraded steering, AMG wheels, Bilstein suspension, and a sports exhaust system, making it a performance car on par with many sports cars of the time.
- Blueberry was kept by Buxbaum for decades and is now being sold by RM Sotheby’s with a price guide of $150,000 – $200,000. It will be available for auction on March 24th, offering an opportunity to own a rare piece of AMG history.
Two Men On A Mission: The Origins Of AMG
AMG was founded by Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher, both engineers working on the Mercedes 300 SE racing engine in the Development Department at Daimler-Benz, until the company made the decision to discontinue all motorsport activities.
AMG-modified Mercedes tend to have a muscular, purposeful look – all backed up by performance to match.
Crestfallen by this decision, the two men spent their spare time at Aufrecht’s house in Grossaspach, further honing the performance of the Mercedes 300 SE engine. Their work would be put to the test by racing driver Manfred Schiek who raced with the engine in the German Touring Car Championship – he won ten races and left no question in the minds of Aufrecht and Melcher that they were onto something.
In 1966 Aufrecht convinced Melcher to leave Mercedes and join him in starting a new company to develop racing versions of Mercedes engines. They would name their new firm Aufrecht Melcher Großaspach Ingenieurbüro, Konstruktion und Versuch zur Entwicklung von Rennmotoren, orAufrecht Melcher Großaspach engineering firm, design and testing for the development of racing engines in English.
This company name was a bit of a mouthful even for the Germans who seem to love creating words that use as many letters of the alphabet as possible, and so it was simply shortened to AMG for most use cases – standing for Aufrecht, Melcher, and Großaspach after the town where Aufrecht’s house was, where they had started it all.
AMG would quickly become an unofficial Skunk Works division for Mercedes thanks to the deep ties that Aufrecht and Melcher had with the automaker’s engineering division. Over the course of the 1970s and 1980s AMG would develop a global reputation for developing both quick race cars and quick road cars.
Daimler-Benz would enter into a cooperation agreement with AMG in 1993, allowing AMG to sell their modified vehicles right through Mercedes dealerships, and for the two firms to co-develop cars. In 1999 Mercedes bought a controlling share of AMG, and in 2005 Aufrecht sold the last of his shares, making AMG now a fully Mercedes-owned company.
The Mercedes 500 SEL 5.0 AMG “Blueberry”
The story of “Blueberry,” the special Mercedes 500 SEL 5.0 AMG shown in this article, also incudes the story of the founding of AMG North America by Richard Buxbaum – creating an official entity to sell AMG’s modified Mercedes directly to North American buyers.
The Mercedes-Benz 500 SEL 5.0 was quipped with a 5.0 liter V8 rated at 230 bhp and a healthy 296 lb ft of torque, though this one likely makes a little more due to AMG’s period modifications.
In the early 1980s Hans Werner Aufrecht was seeking a US agent to manage the US clientele who were increasingly aware of AMG’s cars, and increasingly interested in buying them. Purely by chance Aufrecht would meet Richard Buxbaum of Classic Motors in Westmont, Illinois and the two men would quickly form both a friendship and a working relationship.
Buxbaum founded AMG North America and become the company’s CEO. This partnership would be critical to AMG’s success in the US market – Buxbaum’s bespoke “Westmont” cars, known for their German quality and American flair, captivated an elite clientele of artists, athletes, movie stars, and business tycoons.
During one conversation, Buxbaum mentioned that it was impossible to find a 500 SEL in great colors, and shortly thereafter Aufrecht sourced the car with the intention of modifying it for Buxbaum as a gift. Aufrecht would personally oversee a wide variety of upgrades to the car as a complete surprise, including a new Orion Grey leather upholstered interior with power-adjustable seats from an S-Class coupe.
German automotive modification firm Gemballa would help with some of the interior modifications, and the car was fitted with an Italvolanti Corsa steering wheel, an AMG gauge suite, and pickled grey wood trim with a hand-rubbed lacquer finish.
The original wheels were replaced with a staggered set of 16″ light alloy Penta wheels (8″fronts and 9″ rears) with color-matched centers, polished lips, and billet AMG center-caps. The car was also given a complete Bilstein sports suspension system, a limited-slip differential, and a complete sports exhaust system with a set of hand-fabricated tubular headers and a chrome-finished, twin-tipped AMG muffler.
After all of these modifications Blueberry was described as being both faster and better behaved than the stock Mercedes 500 SEL 5.0, with performance equivalent to sports cars of its era. The car would arrive in the United States in 1985, much to the shock of Richard Buxbaum who would treasure the car so much he would keep it in his personal ownership for decades – right through to the current day.
The interior of the car was upgraded with a new Orion Grey leather upholstered interior with power-adjustable seats from an S-Class coupe.
He’s now decided that it’s time to let the car move on to a new owner, and it will be crossing the auction block with RM Sotheby’s with bidding starting on the 24th of March. The price guide is $150,000 – $200,000 USD which seems a steal for such an historically significant AMG.
If you’d like to read more about the car or register to bid you can visit the listing here.
Images: Jeremy Clift ©2025 Courtesy of RM Sotheby’s
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.