From its 205-employee operation in Affalterbach, Germany, the engine builder, racing team, and tuning firm AMG had, by 1989, already released some of the most powerful, outrageous, and well-engineered creations.

At this time, the company was nearly four years into a marquee motorsport partnership with Mercedes-Benz and growing a thriving, worldwide network of franchisees providing road cars to eager clients.

In fact, AMG and Sauber were the corporate partners by which Mercedes-Benz had clandestinely instigated in 1984, —and then officially announced in 1989, its return to the highest echelons of motorsport with the reactivation of its legendary Sportabteilung—"sports department”—and famous “Silver Arrow” racecars.

But the world-beating partnership between Mercedes-Benz and AMG, which many automotive enthusiasts and motorsport fans today take for granted, is unlikely to have ever materialized without the novel, high-performance engineering breakthroughs developed for Mercedes-Benz en...