TIL: There's an Honda AMG car which is a highly obscure performance model of the Honda Civic

[MDCrabCakeFan86]

While looking through news headlines, I found this interesting article reporting on a highly obscure performance model of the Honda Civic that also has this YouTube video embedded in the article:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PvwbtJmgLM

Mercedes and AMG Really Did Build Honda Civics. Here's Why It Happened

This Mercedes-built, AMG-tuned Honda Civic is an almost-forgotten Japanese classic that the world should honor.

www.thedrive.com

According to the article, this model of the Honda Civic was only sold in South Africa. Honda wanted to enter the South African market in the 1980s but they had no manufacturing or dealer network in South Africa, but Mercedes-Benz did, so Honda actually had negotiated a deal with Mercedes-Benz to license-build and sell this Honda Civic AMG model which was named the Honda Ballade AMG. This site, The Drive, attempted to get more information about this Honda AMG model from both Honda of South Africa and Mercedes-Benz but neither responded to their request so it's unknown just how many of the Honda Ballade AMG was actually produced but only thing that's known is production ended for the Ballade AMG in 2001:

AMG may now be synonymous with Mercedes-Benz, but before it was brought in-house, it had its hand in more than just Mercs. For a period in the 1980s and 1990s, AMG also tweaked a handful of Japanese cars, among which was an obscure Honda Civic performance model never sold in the United States, Europe, or Japan. I'm talking of course about the Honda Ballade AMG; a South Africa exclusive whose parents probably regret their offspring.

It begins in the 1980s, when Mercedes-Benz of South Africa (MBSA) wanted a model more affordable than the 190 in its showrooms according to South African YouTuber Chris VS Cars. At the same time, reports Driven to Write, Honda was trying to enter South Africa but had no dealer or manufacturer network. For reasons that aren't obviously documented on the English internet, the two struck a deal where Mercedes would license-build the Ballade.

Honda Ballade AMGs were reportedly sold across both the fourth and fifth generations of Civic, of which only photos of the latter are known to survive today. Again, info's hard to come by, but we know Ballade AMG production ceased by the end of 2001 when the nameplate was discontinued globally. Much about the AMG version, including how many were made, remains a mystery, and probably will forever: none of our inquiries to Honda of South Africa or Mercedes-AMG were returned. One imagines neither wanting to honor this piece of their shared history—Honda for outsourcing a performance model, Mercedes for letting an AMG badge adorn another make.

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[BLEEN]

This is awesome lol

 

[AMAGON]

This is something you see with someone slapping an AMG badge from Advanced Auto to their hoopty.

 

[Polk]

AMG also made version of Mitsubishi Galant (you can drive it in Forza Horizon )

 

[Rizific]

I grew up in the early 90s and was around the import street scene quite a bit when it exploded...before the fast and furious bullshit. Followed the Honda scene closely, had a 92 and 00 civic hatch at one point. First time I've ever heard of this. Pretty neat. Tuned b16 by amg to 172hp, that's 12hp over stock. They even said it was available with a b18 variant. Afaik, no civic at that time came with a b18.

 

[Stencil]

Holy shit those are cool looking. If I ever get rich, I'm going to buy a car like that: an obscure but reliable variant of cars that were really common in the 90s, and totally rehaul it. Thanks for sharing.

 

[pez2k]

They even said it was available with a b18 variant. Afaik, no civic at that time came with a b18.

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Yeah, that's the especially interesting bit - unfortunately the Ballade 180i only used the 140hp non-VTEC B18B4 rather than anything spicy though. In the UK we got a Honda Civic VTi 5-door with the 170hp VTEC B18C4 in the mid-90s, but that was a rebadged Honda Domani rather than anything that would be recognised as a Civic outside of Europe. I think most have been gutted for their engines by now though.