Mercedes-Benz C 30 CDI AMG One Of AMG’s Rarest Vehicles

On paper, the C30 CDI AMG actually sounds pretty awesome. It was the right car for the wrong time, unfortunately.
 

If you think about rare AMG’s, you mnight think of the SL65 Black Series, or even the R63 AMG. Both are rare, but for different reasons. The SL is rare because Mercedes chose to limit production. The R63 is rare because buyers chose to limit production. One even more limited? The C30 CDI AMG. CarBuzz says there’s only about 800 of them around, which tracks for AMG rarity.
 
CarBuzz seems to misunderstand why the C30 CDI AMG actually does tick all the right boxes. Most importantly of all from any AMG of that era: it’s daft.
 

AMG was daft enough to put a big honkin’ 5.5 liter V8 in the W203. Why? Because they can. But before they did that, they put the OM612 turbo diesel in the C-class.
 
Doesn’t seem daft? Well consider this. AMG added some stroke to the crank throw to bring the 2.7 to a nice round 3.0 liters. Then they put on a bigger turbo, and tuned it for those mods. In the end, it made four hundred pound feet of torque. And 5-cylinder turbo noises. To us, this is about as looney and wild as AMG has always been. That engine would never otherwise find its way into the W203. So that’s another AMG hallmark.
 

Then if we look at what the C30 CDI AMG had as far as competition… well there was none. No other manufacturer was crazy enough to make such a car. To us, BMW simply copied the idea when they came out with the 335d, almost a decade later. So the C30 was unique on its own. But maybe it was a bit ahead of its time.
 
With production in the range of under 800 (depending on your source), it wasn’t exactly a sales flop. AMG was making low volume cars in 2002-2004 when the C30 was rumbling town the roads. Comparing relevant numbers, this writer’s 2004 CLK55 was one of only 500 or so to make it to the US. So it wasn’t a flop by the numbers. It just never had a chance to show what it was really capable of.