for anyone who lives in SE Asia

[zmatt]

The 3.6L AMG M104 is still being made new in South Korea. it is the engine in the Ssangyong Chairman luxury car, which is little more than a W124 trying to look like a W140.

[8=Anonymous=8]

Hmm....
Might try to find a cheap one then

[Dearlove]

yeah i looked into this, that was my initial thought. saw the w124, offered with a 3.6 and i was like, fuck yeah, then looked at the specs and from memory it was a v6...

[Dearlove]

wow, looked at wiki and apparently not, it is a 3.6 inline..

[8=Anonymous=8]

It's got the same code aswell,
If i get a chance, defiantly sourcing one out if it's cheap (thinking of doing a swap)

[SD202]

The 3.6L AMG M104 is still being made new in South Korea. it is the engine in the Ssangyong Chairman luxury car, which is little more than a W124 trying to look like a W140.


is it being produced with a cast iron lower block aluminum head like the traditional M104s ? or have the koreans mixed it up and moved to all aluminum ?

[michael6129]

what the? tell me more about it please specs? wiki says it produces the same hp as my c36. did they buy the license from amg to build this engine? how does it drive lol?

[zmatt]

I don't know how it is different, it uses the same code so my gut tells me the Koreans are producing it to the same specs as the real deal. It probably doesn't come with any special AMG badging. The newer chairman W uses the motor with slightly less power, but the same code, my guess being different tune on the ecu but the same physical motor. I do a lot of business in japan but not Korea, however if these engines prove easy enough to get a hold of then I may have to get a few.

[C43inNC]

What the hell man, they stole the engine and body style? Why?

[zmatt]

they build it under license form Mercedes. Basically Mercedes can make extra money letting the Koreans build old chassis and engines that they don't need but can otherwise get royalties from. Also some of these cars are rebadged as benz's and sold in emerging markets where they cant sell more expensive to make models.

[C43inNC]

That's wild, thanks for the info zmatt!

[zmatt]

no problem, I'm still trying to find a south korean part distributor or salvage yard that will talk to me. Hopefully I can find some.

[Dearlove]

so Australia didn't get the 3.6 chairman...

[Scary-Larry]

That is amazing, but none of us should be surprised that the w202 legacy will never die. I don't imagine that the performance will be anything like the C36AMG since the engine will not go into a Mercedes Benz itself- the cars this company is producing appear to lean more towards luxury rather than sport (or both). Nice looking cars though- the exteriors look very close to the Maybach.

[RemoLexi]

This all sounds like a load of horseshit.

First off I was under the impression that it was China who was illegally making clones.

Second, if its not made by AMG, it simply isn't. So why would you want to ship a pallet of Chinese replica shit and install it into your car? Do you honestly think it will last? Do you honestly think it will even hold compression after 50k miles??

On top of all that, do you really believe MB cares about 'making a little money' selling off copy rights to their cars which puts their name at risk when an idiot buys a sangyong chairman and realizes it complete trash and truly believes that's the work of MB? Or when it kills a family and MB is pointed at for producing a car that fails terribly in a crash test?

All I know about this replica bullshit is that it's done illegally in china (surprise, surprise) and tracking down the responsible company is rabbits hole with forks in the road.

If you have worked in automotive for example, everytime we accidentally get a new part that says made in china we throw that back to the distributer. I can only imagine what kind of cars come of that shithole.

[Dearlove]

the musso which started in 96 has the 3.2, they've done 2-300,000 km's, engines still have the merc badges on them....

[Dearlove]

and its Korean, not Chinese

they were sold though mercedes dealers because merc had a pretty big share of the company. Not sure where your idea of they stole the engine?

[RemoLexi]

Not like Korea makes any better of a car. Just go but a Hyundai

[zmatt]

This all sounds like a load of horseshit.

First off I was under the impression that it was China who was illegally making clones.

Second, if its not made by AMG, it simply isn't. So why would you want to ship a pallet of Chinese replica shit and install it into your car? Do you honestly think it will last? Do you honestly think it will even hold compression after 50k miles??

On top of all that, do you really believe MB cares about 'making a little money' selling off copy rights to their cars which puts their name at risk when an idiot buys a sangyong chairman and realizes it complete trash and truly believes that's the work of MB? Or when it kills a family and MB is pointed at for producing a car that fails terribly in a crash test?

All I know about this replica bullshit is that it's done illegally in china (surprise, surprise) and tracking down the responsible company is rabbits hole with forks in the road.

If you have worked in automotive for example, everytime we accidentally get a new part that says made in china we throw that back to the distributer. I can only imagine what kind of cars come of that shithole.

From what I understand, it's made under license using the old M104 tooling bought from Mercedes directly. As for the AMG motor, it isn't a true AMG as it isn't made by hand in Germany, but it's made to spec. Just be happy you can buy new ones.

[RemoLexi]

There's used ones for sale locally 600-800$ for a 3.6, there's no way you can ship one cheaper from overseas

[Dearlove]

haha, but for people in SE asia or australia a 2nd hand one with fetch a few grand easily