Mercedes-AMG C63 S Coupe review: this bravura V8 is museum bound
This Benz shoves you into your seat with the muscular insistence of a bouncer, or a bear.
I will never understand people who get their salty whiskers in a twist about old things. I have no desire to watch the nine-inch-wide black and white television I endured as a child, nor to fast forward through cassette tapes to find Kiss singing Sure Know Something.
While part of me misses dropping off rolls of film and waiting days to see how many of my photos featured my finger, I have no desire to go back to that system, and similarly I have no interest in driving old cars. They’re not “vintage” – they are inferior, outdated and dull.
A few years ago I was dragged, sorry invited, to a secret, no public access Mercedes museum in Stuttgart, filled with everything from the world’s first car (Benz built it) to … some other old things I can’t remember the name of. Dear Godness but it was boring, I struggled to suppress spine-sapping yawns as my fawning colleagues engaged in feverish frottage with all this dusty old metal.
It comes as some surprise, then, that this week I have been driving what could worthily be described as a classic car – the Mercedes-AMG C63 S Coupe – and I’ve enjoyed it so much that I may have dribbled on myself. Certainly there was some maniacal giggling as I sat in this thuggishly shaped and thunderously delicious-sounding V8-powered obsolescence. It has a little button, you see, that opens some flaps in the church-organ-like exhaust pipes, and when it does you get a sound sensation akin to sitting on Satan’s lap as he gargles hot coals, and then burps the entirety of O Fortuna.
The V8 in question is not as big as the AMG monsters of days past, but its 4.0-litre, twin-turbo layout is still good for 375kW and 700Nm, which is what’s known, in technical terms, as plenty.
It’s not, however, as much as the entirely new C63 that’s already been launched overseas and is heading our way – a hugely high-tech four-cylinder (sigh) turbocharged plug-in hybrid that makes 500kW and more than 1000Nm. Yes, getting that much grunt out of a 2.0-litre engine is very clever, incredible even, but using such technology to replace the sheer malevolent majesty of an AMG V8 is like swapping a bonfire for a wet candle.
I’ve read the reports from people who drove the new car overseas, and the nicest word that was used for the noise it makes was “subtle”. Apparently it’s amazing to drive and technically spectacular, but the C63 has always been defined by its sound as much as its performance. Would a wolf that can no longer howl or even growl be less scary? You know it would.
This is what I was thinking as I spent several aurally satisfying days driving what could well be the last proper V8 I ever get to enjoy. I grew up with similar although less raucous sounds – the first family car I can recall being in was a HZ Holden Kingswood ute with a brash bent eight. I heard them through my tinny television as I watched Brocky at Bathurst and, because I grew up in Canberra, V8s were a large part of the background noise of bogans at play.
It’s not just the noise, of course, there’s also the gloriously progressive way that V8s – even turbocharged ones – make their power. Modern super hybrids and EVs accelerate like a slap in the face, but there’s something purposefully progressive about a V8 like the one in this bravura Benz that shoves you into your seat with the muscular insistence of a bouncer, or a bear.
The small, sad car-nerd part of my brain also recalls the many battles between the C63 and various BMW M3s for dominance of the German excitement-machine category, and while it will continue, it will never be quite as glorious again.
All right, maybe they were tears on my lap rather than drool, because the whole thing made me a tad emotional. Yes, this AMG rides like a snowboard over boulders, but it’s meant to be intense and involving. It also has properly chunky steering, delivered through a sexy carbon-fibre-fitted steering wheel. It has a Race mode that turns it into a tyre-frying lunatic. And did I mention that it’s loud? So, so loud.
In its Coupe guise, the C63 also looks quite attractive, with a kind of cool, killer-whale aesthetic. The good news is that you can, for now, still buy this cool version, at a price of $179,868. And you really should, for history’s sake.
I was the last journalist to drive this C63 before it was taken off the fleet and retired to Mercedes-Benz Australia’s Heritage Collection. No doubt one day it will be in a museum and I will walk past it and feel very old indeed. And then beg someone to let me start it up and give it a rev.
Mercedes-AMG C63 S Coupe
- Engine: 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 (375kW/700Nm)
- Fuel Economy: 10.3 litres per 100km
- Transmission: 9-speed automatic, rear-wheel drive
- Price: $179,868
- Rating: ★★★★