Fact: before AMG was an in-house performance and racing division of Mercedes-Benz, it built race cars out of production sedans.
Fact: for more than a decade starting in the early 1980s, official AMG cars were built in a little strip mall building in the western suburbs of Chicago. Among them, 13 of the 30 or so V8 Hammer sedans and coupes, plus one lone Hammer wagon.
Fact: nearly 30 of these AMG North America “Westmont builds” and their current owners came together for a low-key reunion weekend – along with many of the former AMGNA staff and its founder – on Chicago’s North Shore with very little fanfare. Just a bunch of very rare cars with a handful of very lucky owners regaling the past. And it was incredible.
The event was called 233West, a nod to the address of the former AMG North America headquarters at 233 W. Ogden Avenue in Westmont, Illinois, a half-hour due west of Chicago. This took place over the weekend of June 27th-29th, 2025. Except for the public gathering at a cars and coffee on the final day, the weekend’s activities were entirely private, limited to about 70 people in total – mostly owners and former staff plus a handful of insiders in the Chicago classic car scene.
Organized by Kollin Handler, an auction specialist with RM Sotheby’s Auctions, and coordinated with Brian Hughes, founder of the FuelFed classic European car social club, the 233West weekend took months of planning to pull together.
Key to making the gathering possible was the cooperation of AMG North American founder Richard Buxbaum. In 1981, Buxbaum – who was then running a high-end luxury car dealership that also federalized grey-market imports – was approached by the German tuning company to become an official distributor for AMG in America. Through the early 1990s his shop produced some of the most coveted bespoke performance cars in the world. Buxbaum still resides in the Chicago area and helped locate and authenticate some of the cars that participated in the event.
Genuine AMG vehicles and owners came from California, Florida, Minnesota and even the UK for the gathering. The mix included a handful of Hammers as well as other signature AMG builds like a wide-body C126 SEC coupe, several S126 S-class sedans, an R107 SL roadster and an S123 Sedan, among others.
Staged at the Graduate hotel near the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, the weekend kicked of with a private cocktail reception at The Last Detail, a concours-level restoration, maintenance and detailing facility in nearby North Chicago. Saturday morning found many of the cars and owners atop a parking garage at Northwestern, where professional photographer Jeremy Cliff staged and shot the cars individually and as a group to commemorate the gathering.
When photography wrapped, several of the cars hit the road for a group drive and additional rolling footage for the video crew from Motive Archive. The entire group, including Mr. Buxbaum and more than a dozen former AMG North America mangers, engineers, technicians and other staff then joined owners and guests for a private dinner in adjacent Highwood.
The culmination of the weekend was Sunday’s FuelFed gathering in the scenic village of Winnetka. The regularly scheduled cars-and-coffee event highlighted the assembled AMG legends but also allowed other classic Mercedes-Benz vehicles in the featured section of the lot. Other members also arrived to display their classic European cars and motorcycles in other parts of the lot. In true FuelFed style, the mix of cars was as unexpected as it was exceptional.
As the weekend drew to a close, there were murmurs about when the next such reunion would be. Next year? Maybe two? Perhaps in five years? That all remains to be seen. However, what’s certain is that 233West felt life a genuine once-in-a-lifetime experience. And if you’re a fan of ‘80s Mercedes performance, it was not to be missed.
