When a company has its original 6.3 V8 saloon touring car and current DTM car sitting side by side in its reception, you know it’s probably going to be fun driving its cars. I like AMG. But until recently they were rather hobbled with the image of a tuning company producing muscle-bound, straight-line rocketships, the ring-leaders of the ‘where will it all end?’ German bhp race. Think ‘Mercedes AMG’ and the image that popped into your noggin was of a silver/grey car packing a forced induction V8 or V12, dripping in torque, leaving straight, molten black lines on the road. And some things haven’t changed. However, since the inception of the Black Series a couple of years ago, we’ve come to see that AMG can do more. We now know that they can produce cars that are taut and alive in the corners, cars can that stir your soul with precision and balance, cars like the CLK Black.
Even the ‘normal’ AMG cars like the C63 subsequently seem to have adopted a different philosophy – now it’s not just a hooliganish alternative to an M3, it’s a genuine alternative to an M3. And so we come to the E63. I imagine there was a collective groan from AMG’s design studio when they saw the shape that Mercedes-Benz wanted them to work with. Sensibly they didn’t waste too much time to trying to make a Monet out of a monstrosity and just applied the usual subtly deeper front spoiler, wider arches, sill skirts and rear apron. The result looks tough, but ugly in a very rhombic way.
Inside, it’s a feast of buttons and dials. The ESP and electronically controlled dampers have three settings each: ‘On’, ‘Sport’ and ‘Off’, and ‘Comfort’, ‘Sport’ and ‘Sport plus’, respectively. The gearbox is the seven-speed unit first seen in the SL63 and has five settings – ‘Controlled efficiency’, ‘Sport’, ‘Sport plus’, ‘Manual’ and ‘Race Start’ (launch control). Finally, and fortunately, you can program your preferred combination of all the above into the ‘AMG button’, which is basically a copy of M-Sport’s M button but on the transmission tunnel rather than the steering wheel.
Aesthetically challenged E-class more attractive with 6.2-litre V8 poke
source: evo
