So you arrive at the Phillip Island race circuit and the pitlane is chockers with around 60 Mercedes-Benz AMG models valued at close to $7.0-million.
You’re escorted into the garage but it’s been transformed from a race garage to an architecturally-designed combination of modern office and café with heating and air-conditioning, quality floor coverings, posh furniture, an MV Augusta motorcycle (the brand owned by Mercedes-AMG), the smell of fresh espresso and lots of flat screens showing AMG vehicles at speed.
Walking around - all in perfectly tailored black-on-black AMG uniforms - are race driver Peter Hackett and his team of fellow race drivers including some V8 Supercar and GT Championship stars.
‘Headquarters’ for the team at race circuits is their own F1-style truck – that’s ‘glamour’ with a capital ‘G’!
Welcome to the jaw-dropping world of the annual Festival Of AMG.
Being an AMG owner certainly has its privileges – and this is definitely one of them.
Hackett runs the AMG customer experience drive days through South-East Asia and the annual ‘Festival Of AMG’ (this year at Phillip Island) is the biggest with some Asian customers flying in specifically – lured by the chance to drive around the hallowed Aussie motorcycle GP circuit.
They joined local customers in the three-day event (a different group each day) and some chose the five-star experience of flying from Melbourne to Phillip Island by helicopter.
We’ve been to a few of these sort of events with a variety of brands and in every way – quality, slickness of presentation, caliber of the staff, the driving experience, even the standards of the restrooms – the AMG day has lapped the field (in the same way as the Petronas Mercedes-Benz team is dominating F1 racing).
Nothing is overlooked, everything is five-star and – as we discovered – every participant gets to enjoy lots of race circuit laps in all models…plus the expert tutelage of Mr Hackett and his team.
We bumped into a mate who is a former Mercedes-Benz dealer. He has plenty of coin and has retired to live and play golf on the NSW North Coast…but he sets his annual calendar each year around the AMG days.
Yep, for fans of high performance German cars, the Festival Of AMG has already achieved ‘icon’ status.
Over the years new car launches at Phillip Island have seen us do more than a few laps at high speed and if you totaled the number of laps from all of those launches and multiplied it by five you’d be getting close to the number of laps we did in one day at the Festival Of AMG.
Oh and those 60 AMG vehicles ready to drive? They’re all the very latest models and are provided by ‘Benz…we’re not talking about wearing-out your own car here.
After a top-notch breakfast and wonderful barista-made coffee, the day kicked-off with Hackett fronting a slick video presentation outlining what we’re about to do and of course the pitfalls of any ‘over-driving’ at the high-speed Phillip Island circuit.
“There’s no such thing as a small crash here,” Hackett warned and added the Fox Group (owners of the Phillip Island race circuit) didn’t want tyre marks across the grass and freshly-prepared gravel traps as we were only weeks away from the MotoGP event and its worldwide television audience.
There were only two ‘off-roaders’ during our day – we saw an SL63 AMG sliding backwards into the gravel trap at turn two and apparently another customer had a wild moment on the grass at The Hayshed.
But to kick things off, for our first experience we were ushered out to the hairpin corner at the back of the pits where a fleet of the new AMG C63 S sedans were waiting and a water truck was hosing-down the surface.
This was Hackett’s clever idea of a warm-up exercise – turn-off the traction control and try to be a ‘drift’ driver with the twin-turbo 4.0-litre V8 howling in first and second gears.
It’s brilliant as you quickly forget everything else happening in your life and focus on driving – all at relatively low speeds of course.
Next-up was the main straight where a proper drag racing ‘Christmas Tree’ light system had been set-up and you worked through A45 AMG, CLA 45 AMG, E63 AMG and SL63 AMG models, ‘racing’ whoever was in the other lane for a standing quarter mile and receiving a computer printout after each run with your reaction time and progressive speeds.
This was a good exercise in sharpening reactions and sampling the ‘Race Start’ mode of the superb AMG products.
Then we were onto a slalom exercise in E63 AMG and CLS 63 AMG S vehicles with an instructor alongside coaching on lines, braking/acceleration and keeping your eyes up.
So, warmed-up and coached it was time for our first laps of the full circuit and it was easy to find the car to drive – just look for one with your name on the rear windows like a V8 Supercar (in our case it was CLA 45 AMG).
Three laps with an instructor alongside (essential for first-timers as Phillip Island is a difficult layout to learn with the correct line not always obvious).
Then it was the same again in every different model – all with the speed limiters set at 150km/h.
So, for example, on the main straight, out of Southern Loop and out of The Hayshed your www.carshowroom.com.au correspondent was slowed by the limiter cutting-in…but some of the other guests experiencing ‘The Island’ for the first time certainly had sweaty brows when they returned to the pits and removed their crash helmets.
A perfect time to break for lunch.
We ‘broke bread’ with a couple of local Mercedes AMG owners – one from West Australia and another from Sydney. Both had owned a variety of AMG products but both were ‘newbies’ when it came to hot-lapping Phillip Island – they couldn’t wait to finish lunch and get back behind the wheel.
For Hackett’s team the lunch hour is hardly a ‘break’ – in this time the technical folk and Continental tyre guys gave all of the cars a ‘once-over’ to make sure they remained in tip-top condition for the afternoon belting (tyre pressures were constantly adjusted as road tyres in these conditions really work hard).
After another word on safety from Hackett we were off on a disciplined run through all of the Mercedes AMG products, five laps at a time and no speed limit – so everyone drove all of the different models.
Honestly this was the best day of the year.
And, to wrap things up, a reality check.
Just when you think a copy of your resume should be sent to each V8 Supercar team you were ushered from the drivers’ seat to the left seat for a few laps with one of the Mercedes AMG instructors at the wheel…nope, even after all these laps, the only ‘driver’ you’re qualified for is the one in your golf bag (and golfing mates would even argue that one).
Best car on the day was the C63 AMG S.
Even though the ‘C’ ‘makes do’ with a 375kW/700Nm twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 to the 430kW/800Nm twin-turbocharged 5.5-litre V8 in the E63 AMG S, the smaller version is 145kgs lighter and was just a bit more nimble in the twisty stuff at Phillip Island.
But we’re splitting hairs there. As we’ve said before, we can’t nominate an AMG-badged Mercedes-Benz we don’t love.
And if we were an AMG owner we’d be counting-down the days until our email ‘beeped’ announcing the 2016 customer experience days.
Hackett says next year’s program will be the best yet with some new inclusions (we suspect a trip to the snow and ice of the Southern Hemisphere Proving Grounds new Queenstown, New Zealand could be on the list).
