What happens when one of the world’s most elite performance car brands meets Brooklyn’s most provocative creative collective? You get “Not for Automotive Use”, a bold, high-concept collaboration between Mercedes-AMG and MSCHF, unveiled during NYCxDesign Festival.
The project transforms actual AMG vehicle components into sculptural domestic objects, blending German engineering with postmodern wit. Drawing on the spirit of Italy’s Radical Design movement, the collection reimagines high-performance machines as living room statements, race-bred engineering recast as furniture and lighting, with just enough irony to make you question its function.
Rather than fetishizing the automobile, this series flips the script: AMG grilles, seatbelts, forged wheels, and upholstery inserts are recontextualized as ambient light switches, ergonomic seating, and architectural structures. The visual language is unmistakably AMG, but the intent is pure MSCHF, both reverent and absurd.
A complementary apparel capsule extends the theme with technical prints and accessories, including graphical references to AMG components and a humorous nod to the brand’s roots in Affalterbach, Germany.
All pieces are available only by special order in extremely limited numbers. The collection was conceived collaboratively between MSCHF’s Brooklyn studio and the AMG design team in Affalterbach, with production matching the precision of a performance vehicle, yet the outcome is deliberately useless for driving.
For the world premiere, MSCHF is doing what it’s never done before: opening its Brooklyn studio to the public. Once cloaked in secrecy, the space becomes an immersive installation, blurring the boundary between concept and execution.
This is design with velocity, part industrial ballet, part satire, part sculpture. Nothing here is for automotive use, and that’s precisely the point.
