Price: £66,810
Top speed: 155mph
0-62mph: 4 seconds
CO2 per km: 192g
MPG: 34.5
Last month I went to a quiz night hosted by a motoring firm. It was quite intimidating brushing shoulders with some of the industry’s biggest engineering brains. Over pints and pigs in blankets, we swapped tales of torque vectoring and towing capacities. The dress code was very Dad. The questions were of “niche interest” to say the least, but two rounds were hilarious: Guess the Headlamp (various lenses were passed round – one from a 1982 Ford Sierra was identified by a guy on my team) and Make Some Noise – 10 engines were revved over the speakers (it was music to our ears).
One of the most distinctive engine notes was made by the Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG. The noise it pumps out of its quadruple sports exhaust is a rich, treacly, rumbling throb. It’s magnificent. It is the Richard Burton of exhaust notes. It’s a sound that makes you want to turn off the radio and open the window to hear it better. It makes you blip the throttle at the lights just to get passersby to look round.
A quick trawl on the internet yields dozens of YouTubes of parked C63s thrashing their engines with captions like: “Brutal Revs”, “Pure Sound”, “Loudest EVER ROARRRR!!!!”
The strange thing is, however, the C63 looks perfectly average. It isn’t some vented and winged hyper car. It’s based on the C-Class compact saloon – Benz’s bestseller – and it has four doors, a decent boot and five seats. Look closely and you’ll see the signs: there’s the gigantic air intakes hidden in the front valence; huge callipers cling to each brake disc; a brace of chrome-winged bucket seats glint from behind the smoked glass… And then, of course, there’s that engine. The old C63 had a 6.2-litre engine (though why it wasn’t called a C62 I don’t know). This new model boasts a bi-turbo 4-litre V8. It’s smaller, but it produces even more power than before and is more efficient at it, too.
It means this Merc is one of the fastest cars you can buy. The AMG-tuned V8 churns out 469bhp and reaches 62mph in 4 seconds – if you can control the wheel spin. I managed to slide the back out in a wet carpark doing less than 10mph. If there was a figure for expletives per mile (EPM?) this would have one of the highest. With each corner you oscillate between terror and near orgasm. You feel all its horse power. At slow speeds the car seems wild-eyed and twitchy: if it had nostrils they’d be snorting. But let it loose and it settles down. Ladle on the power and it gathers its skirts before hammering down the road. It’s a total humdinger, a scorching drive. At speed it’s rock solid and composed, the aerodynamics gluing it to the tarmac.
Inside, it is posh but fairly low key. There’s a special AMG instrument cluster and thick three-spoke steering wheel to whiten your knuckles on, but in essence it’s still a very usable five-seater. And that’s quite clever, because to buy a car like this means you’re probably rich. To be rich you’re probably middle aged. To be middle aged you probably have a family – and they have to sit somewhere. Boom!
Email Martin at martin.love@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @MartinLove166
