Power play in the Mercedes C63 AMG Coupé

1.981179-1718609797 — “At that point this Mercedes is going nowhere, very, very slowly, and deafeningly..." Image Credit: Stefan Lindeque/ANM

Supercars all come with warning stickers. In fact, supercars are warning stickers.

You look at a Lamborghini Countach and with its pricks, sharp edges, tall steps and gaping holes, you're afraid to get near it without first finalising your will. And even then, you edge closer to it as if you were treading on a tight rope.

Or you could adopt the old, ‘If I play dead, maybe it will just scurry off?'

But this, the new Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG Coupé, doesn't come with any warning stickers. It doesn't even come with a German with a megaphone shouting "Achtung, achtung!" It should.

This thing, in the wrong hands… Well, let's just say it's like a car chase script in Michael Bay's hands. Bad things happen.

Despite 487bhp, the C63 AMG Coupé is the world's slowest way of getting anywhere. Let me explain. Here's my routine whenever I'm given a new car like this to test: get in, steering wheel electrically telescoped all the way out, seat upright, adjust the mirrors so that three quarters of them aren't filled by the car's side panels, change all the preset radio stations to my preferences, moan at not being able to find the traction control button, find it in the most obvious place, hold it down for ever until a shocked bong comes on to tell me I've dared to switch off the traction control, slip it into gear, and do my best to mash my right foot straight through the firewall.

At that point this Mercedes is going nowhere, very, very slowly, and deafeningly. Right about then your spine becomes an acoustic amplifier, as the snarls and howls of the hand-built V8 gush through you and explode out the ends of every single one of your bodily hairs. You now resemble a porcupine in full-on attack mode, like someone's-messed- with-her-eggs attack mode (Do porcupines lay eggs?). You're still going nowhere, the tyres are emanating so much toxic smoke they should be classified as chemical weapons under the Geneva Protocol, and you couldn't be happier than sitting there grinning devilishly in the world's slowest car.

But then it all becomes so obvious. As aggressive as it seems at first, the C63 AMG Coupé doesn't need a warning sticker, even though it's clearly a supercar. Take the lead out of your shoe soles, and it all becomes so easily controllable. You can steer it with the throttle, and change your line through a given corner three times on the way out. There you are, powersliding through a bend, and a cat darts out, more throttle, you go around it, when a child steps onto the road, less throttle and you tuck in, and then the road planners decided that a kerb on the inside in the middle of the turn would be a good idea, so more throttle, and you go nicely wide for the exit.

At half-travel on the accelerator pedal you can negotiate any corner in any gear with utter poise. The Coupé is curiously a little bit heavier than the saloon, but then again it's also a wee bit stiffer, plus you get a roof lining that miraculously disappears somewhere into the back to reveal a full length moon roof. A retuned AMG suspension — three-link front and reinforced multi-link independent rear — works with a wider track all round and extra negative camber dialled in to literally leave an indented footprint on tarmac surfaces. It just carves its own way around, the selective dampers always finding a sweet spot between body roll and road composure. That is of course, provided you're at half-throttle…

Get happy with the loud pedal and you're easily overpowering all the AMG-developed suspension and chassis updates with nothing but your right foot. You can steer this car with the accelerator like no other that I can remember, choosing an angle of attack with the tiller (a sharp 13.5:1 steering ratio, by the way) and sticking with it all the way through a sweeping bend, making minor corrections through nothing but the twitch of your ankle. Blast around as you would in something all-wheel drive or mid-engined, and you'll likely pay the price though. This Merc is exceptionally talented at being a comfortable Merc most of the time, but if the road opens up and you push your luck, one minute it's a cossetting Mercedes and the next it's trying to kill you. But gently, like a Mercedes would. Like, imagine being smothered by a cashmere-covered duck-feathered pillow? That's a nice way to go.

Pay it the respect that 487 horsepower deserve — smooth throttle inputs — and suddenly the C63 AMG Coupé hasn't got you by the collar any more — it's just making ridiculously fast progress so startlingly easy. And we've still got all the AMG buttons switched to Defcon 5.

As for that steering, I just have to add that it's really rather good. Everybody is doing electric jobbies nowadays, but everybody is also getting it wrong. Case in point, the Merc's rivals, BMW and Audi. I've only just experienced the new Porsche 911's system and that's probably the leader at the moment, but as far as I'm concerned the Merc's electric steering system is the best of the rest. And to think how bad they used to be only a generation ago.

Yet, as brilliant as it is to drive and as pampering as it is just carrying you to and from work, the Merc's biggest talent, indisputably, is its power. AMG's Speedshift seven-speed transmission is the only cog-swapper you can get in the C63, and the lack of a manual option doesn't bother me in the slightest. Paddles behind the steering wheel are made of cold, brushed steel, and they connect to the experience like few such gearboxes can. I just drove that new McLaren MP4-12C, and only those aluminium works-of-art they call transmission paddles better the Merc's feel and aggressive jolt. In its standard setting, the 'box makes light work of traffic duties, but in the sportiest manual setting it shoves you back into the headrest seven times on the way to the 250kph speed limit. That's what you get with gear shifts in 100 milliseconds.

However good the transmission is, it has to take a back seat to AMG's 457bhp 6.2-litre V8. Summoned with magic by grey wizards at AMG's Affalterbach department, this thing delivers 600Nm of torque at 5,000rpm and the power peaks at 6,800rpm. Those are high peak figures, especially for the twist, but the relentless surge of horses rushing towards the rear wheels is simply endless, wherever the rev needle may rest. The forward thrust is just savage. Mercedes claims 0-100kph takes 4.3 seconds but I call that bluff. Not that I was ever going in a straight line long enough to rubbish that lowly claim, but if I was, I bet this could pull off quicker sprints than that in optimal conditions.

Most customers will probably have enough smarts to ask AMG's engineers to go the whole hog and opt for the Performance package, like our tester. That takes the engine to 487bhp, thanks to SLS AMG goodies like forged pistons, connecting rods and lightweight crankshaft adopted from the gullwing model, which collectively save 3kg in weight. It's not so much the weight itself that counts, but the vastly reduced inertia, which in turn increases the revviness and response of the naturally aspirated V8.

Mercedes also makes some proud claims of improved fuel economy, and rightly so because we averaged around 12 litres over a few days, but make no mistake: this is a large-displacement, free-breathing V8, which can't really hope to match efficiency figures of its turbocharged lower-capacity rivals.

Really, that only means that AMG is now one of few remaining proud pillars of everything that's right about performance engines, and dare I say it, their recent endeavours in the lab have finally managed to eclipse the achievements of another rival skunkworks.

And yes, I'm afraid that unfortunately means some polar bears were (possibly) harmed in the making of this car. There's your warning sticker.

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