Bruno Sacco settled the SEC’s shape decades ago: a long hood, clear surfaces, and side glass that runs unbroken past the cabin because there is no B-pillar to interrupt it. Mechatronik’s M SEC treats that outline as the one part of the car beyond negotiation. Materials change, the stance changes, every mechanical system underneath changes with them. The proportions do not.
Thirty cars mark the firm’s 30th anniversary in 2027, each starting as an owner’s SEC, configured bespoke, and finished by hand in Pleidelsheim.
Carbon where it counts, Sacco everywhere else
Under the skin, the widebody is new from the ground up. Bumpers front and rear, fenders, side skirts, side cladding and the rear spoiler are all carbon fiber, shaped after the AMG widebody kits of the 1980s and cut to sharpen the silhouette instead of redrawing it. Owners can leave the weave exposed, tint it, or bury it under paint laid on so fine the pattern still shows through.
Lighting keeps the period face and replaces the hardware behind it, a Bi-LED module handling both beams inside the SEC’s narrow original lamp shape, the high beam reaching about 380 meters, and the lamp housings can be finished in body color. Two 19-inch wheel designs split the difference between eras, an AERO wheel modeled on the Hammer-era monoblock and a cross-spoke design beside it.
The engine AMG already finished
Power comes from the M156, AMG’s 6,208 cc naturally aspirated V8, the engine the big eight-cylinder 126 line grew into.
Output is 500 hp at 6,800 rpm and 630 Nm of torque, about 465 lb-ft, at 5,200 rpm, with both figures shifting slightly by delivery market. The tune stays stock, because Mechatronik wants the linear delivery and the sound exactly as AMG built them.
Drive goes to the rear axle through AMG’s SPEEDSHIFT 7G-TRONIC and a multi-plate limited-slip differential, on Michelin Pilot Sport 4 S tires, 255/35 R19 in front and 295/30 R19 behind. The standard car runs 0 to 100 km/h in 4.2 seconds and stops at an electronically limited 155 mph, or 250 km/h. The GT-Package drops the sprint to 4.0 seconds, raises the limiter to 174 mph (280 km/h), and cuts dry weight from 1,712 kg to 1,624 kg.
Öhlins built the suspension with Mechatronik: Road and Track coilovers with Dual Flow Valve damping, height and damping set for each car rather than a single factory tune. Brakes are Brembo two-piece discs, 360 mm at the front and 330 mm at the rear, growing to 390 mm fronts with sports pads and braided steel lines under the GT-Package, the calipers finished in bespoke colors.
The cabin keeps its architecture
Inside, the layout Sacco’s team drew stays put and everything you touch is re-specified. Leather, stitching, carpets, headliner and door panels are matched to the owner, veneers run from burr walnut, Zebrano and birch to exposed carbon, and the seats range from the original system through sports seats to full buckets, with Mechatronik’s own cluster behind the wheel pairing analog dials with a small display feeding them live data.
The radio wears a 1-DIN period face over DAB+ and Bluetooth 5.0, and the optional hi-fi runs ten speakers, three subwoofers and 1,560 watts through 18 DSP channels.
Every build starts with a teardown to the last screw. The shell is chemically stripped to bare metal and cathodic-dip coated against rust, one employee carries a single car through assembly, and the program behind the car ran four years of prototypes, dyno work and track testing before the first customer build. Mechatronik’s wind tunnel sessions even left the shape slipperier than the original, an improvement felt at speed, not seen.
Editor’s take
Restomods live or die on one judgment: what earned the right to stay original. Mechatronik’s answer is the cleanest in the field, because Sacco’s surfaces earned it and every system underneath them did not. The car that results is the SEC the original brief would have produced with modern brakes and modern damping.
AMG’s last great naturally aspirated V8 works under the long hood, thirty owners supply the donors and set the specification, and the size of the check stays between them and Pleidelsheim. The rest of us get the pictures, and the pictures are very good.
