Introduction
Our story begins in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a time in which many strange and great things occurred. We launched the International Space Station in 1998, we witnessed the horrors of 9/11 in 2001, we were graced by the creations of the MP3 player and iPod, as well as the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube. These were strange times indeed, and we are interested in what Honda was doing in South Africa during this time, with a car it called the Ballade.
Honda & The Ballade
If you are reading this article then you have more than likely heard of the legendary Japanese automaker called Honda, but if you haven’t, I will give you a summary of them here. Honda is known for its reliability, impressive four-cylinder engines and dedication to front wheel drive read my article about drivetrains here). The 2023 Honda Civic Type R currently holds the record for the fastest front wheel drive lap time on the Nürburgring (but there is an SUV that is faster, read that article here) and they also have made the next car I want to buy, the Civic Si.
Honda’s four-cylinder engines are legendary, the K24 is largely considered to be one of the greatest motors of all time. Honda also has achieved the best horsepower per liter ratio through four-cylinder motors as well. They have consistently produced vehicles that are affordable, efficient, reliable and fun to drive throughout their history.
The Civic is almost undoubtedly Honda’s most popular vehicle, it is a cheap and efficient car, but it also feels cheap and efficient as well. In the 80s Honda created the Ballade, which served as a classier version of the Civic. It looked nicer, used better interior materials and had more creature comforts than the Civic did while also still offering a small and efficient form factor. One way to think of it is that the Ballade was made to compete with the Toyota Sprinter, while the Civic was made to compete with the Toyota Corolla.
AMG
Here I make the same assumption about you as I did with Honda, that is I assume if you are reading this article you already know about the infamous tuning company called AMG. AMG stands for Aufrecht, Melcher and GroBaspach; Aufrecht and Melcher are the founders, and GroBaspach is the birthplace of Aufrecht.
Contrary to popular belief, AMG was not always a part of Mercedes Benz, in fact they were only purchased by Mercedes Benz in 1999. Prior to that they were an impressive tuning company that was independent and free to partner with whomever they liked. However, they did maintain a very close working relationship with Mercedes Benz even before they were bought by them.
AMG would partner with an automaker to produce performance variants of their existing models. This is essentially what they do now for Mercedes, they were just free agents back then. In the late 80s and early 90s AMG partnered with Mitsubishi to produce a few AMG variants of their standard models. After hearing that, AMG partnering with Honda doesn’t sound that crazy now does it?
The Joining of AMG and Honda
Now we are entering the tale of this strange but interesting collaboration between some (notice that I didn’t say two) legendary automotive names. However, much of the agreements between the companies is not well documented, so what you read below is what I could learn from my research.
In the late 90s Honda was looking to enter and establish themselves in the South African market, but they had built no infrastructure there. At the same time, Mercedes was looking for a cheaper entry level car to sell in South Africa, and they had plenty of dealerships and infrastructure already in place.
So Honda and Mercedes held the solution to each others’ problems, Honda had the Ballade which Mercedes could sell as a cheaper entry level car and Mercedes had the infrastructure that Honda lacked. Naturally a deal was struck, Mercedes would sell the Ballade in their dealerships.
Now where does AMG come in? This is where the picture gets fuzzy, and as far as I can tell there is no documentation that states exactly why, or how, AMG entered the conversation. So, I feel obligated to say that the rest of this section is my educated guess of what happened, based on factual information I have read.
I suspect that Mercedes did not want to sell “just” a Honda in their dealerships, they wanted to sell something that is more prestigious. So as a result of this, they called AMG in to spruce up the Ballade and make it more special, for lack of a better term. And this is how the AMG Ballade was born in South Africa.
The AMG Ballade
As was stated in the previous section, the AMG Ballade was a spruced up version of the normal Ballade. AMG produced two tiers of their version of the Ballade, one with creature comforts added but no performance modifications and one with both the creature comforts and performance modifications.
The standard Ballade was powered by Honda’s impressive B18 motor which produced 138 horsepower (read my article about horsepower here). The B18 is still considered to be a great motor today, don’t be fooled by that small horsepower number, it has got some serious potential.
AMG got that B18 to produce 175 horsepower, which is quite the increase. They achieved this through tuning and adding a performance exhaust. Additionally, AMG lowered the standard Ballade by about one and a half inches with Eibach suspension.
The cosmetic enhancements included new 15- or 16-inch wheels, a front spoiler, colour matched side sills, a white instrument cluster and new shift knob.
Conclusion
This truly is one of the most unique collaborations I have ever seen in the automotive industry. A tuner company and their future parent company working together (AMG and Mercedes), and a Japanese automaker (Honda) known for producing cheap and reliable cars pairing with a German automaker (Mercedes) known for producing luxurious and powerful vehicles.
But despite the weirdness of the collaboration, there is no denying that it produced something special. Nowadays if I were to see a Civic with an AMG badge, I’d assume that it’s some kid trying to make their Honda look more expensive. But it turns out that the AMG Civic does in fact exist after all.
Sources: MotorTrend, CarBuzz, TheDrive, Reddit, Wikipedia, Honda-Tech
