Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG: ‘This is a wonderful car to drive … and I don’t like it at all’
Rumour has it, when senior Benz staff realised how different this stunningly impressive vehicle would be from models of old, they considered calling it something else. They should have.
Mike Tyson teaching Tai Chi, Billie Eilish singing upbeat songs about kittens and flowers and Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd jointly taking a vow of humility. None of these things would be quite as strange, or discombobulating, as Mercedes-Benz producing a C63 with a four-cylinder engine.
For the 98 per cent of you who are not huge car nerds like me, I should explain that the C63 is a legendarily badass Benz from the company’s skunkworks department, AMG – and always, always powered by the kind of V8 that sounds like a an explosion in an explosives factory.
Each version, over the years, has gotten bigger, louder and scarier, and all of the power has always been directed to the rear wheels alone, for maximum madness.
I once travelled to the hallowed headquarters of AMG in Affalterbach, Germany, where hordes of intensely serious men with clipped moustaches tinkered with vast V8 engines, exhibiting the kind of reverence usually seen in museums where trusted artists are allowed to work on restoring masterpieces.
Each individual V8 found in an AMG C63 was effectively constructed by a single fiercely proud engineer, who was allowed to stamp his signature onto the engine block so that its eventual owner could show his friends and bore them rigid with the story of its singular creation.
And now I’ve just driven the all-new Mercedes-AMG C63 S E Performance, which has more technology, power, torque and speed than any previous version of this car, but also a four-cylinder engine and very sensible all-wheel drive. I must say it left me confused and conflicted, but also concerned for the mental health of the men in Affalterbach, who have effectively had their lives’ work cut in half, minimised and muffled. They did not seem like the kind of men prone to crying, but I bet there was an awful lot of shouting when the move to a more sensible, future-friendly hybridised C63 was announced.
On the plus side, AMG claims this is the most powerful four-cylinder engine ever fitted to a production car; it makes an unimaginable 350kW and 545Nm. Even that wasn’t going to impress V8 fans, however, so they plonked an electric motor with 150kW and 320Nm on the rear axle. All up, this plug-in hybrid C63 boasts 500kW and 1020Nm, compared to a mere 375kW and 700Nm in the last, and now highly collectable, twin-turbo V8 version.
It’s also faster, with a zero to 100km/h time of 3.4 seconds, half a second sharper than the aurally if not morally superior C63 it replaces.
But therein lies the problem, for me and other visibly ageing enthusiasts. Few vehicles outside of the Italian supercar strata are as associated with their sound as the AMG C63. The old one caused dead pets in your back yard to howl when you started it; the new one comes to life with a desperate-sounding electric hum, and can be driven in whisper-quiet EV-only mode, albeit only for 15km.
It also offers many dials and doodads for twiddling between various modes, including the ability to select “Enhanced” sound, which activates speakers both inside and outside the car to pump up the volume of what Benz says are all genuine engine and exhaust noises. The C63 makes many and varied sounds, none of them great, but if you can work out how to engage manual-shifting mode (I got there, but it took me a week), you do get satisfying boom-bangs on fast upshifts.
It’s wildly and involvingly fast. It also handles better than any old-school AMG C63, by a long way. The steering, often a little light on in Benzes, is also absolutely superb, and noticeably improves when you engage any of its various Sport or Track modes.
On a winding road it has the performance, handling and feedback to match cars that cost vastly more money, and frankly the $187,900 price tag is a genuine bargain for this much grunt, even if it’s more than $20,000 over what the most recent C63 would have cost you.
It’s also significantly bigger (and thus more roomy inside) and, with its perfectly judged muscular styling, quite possibly the most gorgeous C63 these eyes have ever seen.
You could say that Mercedes-Benz had no choice but to produce a car like this, that V8s are irrelevant to younger generations, but I would counter that AMG cars have always been bought by older, richer people anyway.
Rumour has it that when senior Benz staff realised just how different this stunningly impressive vehicle would be from the C63s of old, they considered retiring the nameplate and calling it something else. They should have.
Overall, then, I think the Mercedes-AMG C63 S E Performance is a wonderful thing to drive. But personally, cussedly, because that engine is such a break from tradition, I don’t like it at all.
–
Mercedes-AMG C63 S E Performance
Engine: 2.0-litre turbo four-cylinder plus electric motor (500kW/1020Nm)
Fuel economy: 6.1L/100km (Ho-ho, I don’t think so)
Transmission: Nine-speed automatic, all-wheel drive
Price: $187,900
Rating: 4/5
