Mercedes coupe passes 1000km test
The C 63 S coupe makes a welcome return to our showrooms, and appears hotter than ever. Paul Owen takes it for a long drive.
Apersonal highlight of the 2015 driving calendar for me was piloting the thennew Mercedes-AMG C 63 S sedan around a snow-fringed Mount Panorama circuit at Bathurst.
There’s always a dynamic difference to be enjoyed when a car gets upgraded from ‘‘ordinary’’ Mercedes-Benz status to full Mercedes-AMG branding, and the ultra-fast four-door clearly displayed the merits of its new twin-turbo petrol V8 engine, the active engine mounts that allow that motor mass to influence steering agility, and the new electronically managed rear diff, which adapts the side-to-side torque distribution to allow tighter corner exits.
The biddable handling of the new 63 around the dramatic racetrack made memories of the old model appear truck-like and dull, but in the back of my mind a single thought dampened my enthusiasm a little for the sedan. It was that this car will be even better when the inevitable coupe version arrives.
That day has come, and the C 63 S looks absolutely stunning in twodoor form.
Where the sedan hides its performance potential behind an everyday car fac¸ade, the coupe definitely isn’t quite so modest about it. Wider wheel tracks than the sedan allow the fitting of wider rear tyres, and the steeply plunging roofline and bulging wheel arches make this C 63 S appear as menacing and dangerous as a snarling Rottweiler.
The coupe might have lost a little rear seat room and a whole lotta luggage space (down from 433 litres to 355) compared with the previous normally-aspirated 6.2 litre version, but the more upfor-it visuals remove any doubts anyone might harbour about its parentage. She’s a fully-blown AMG hot-rod alright, not some mere dress-up of a C-class coupe.
Mount Panorama wasn’t available, so I had to devise my own challenging test for this version of the C 63 S.
It’s exactly 500 kilometres from our home in Orewa to our ‘‘pet’’ Edwardian villa in Gisborne, where a painter was putting the finishing touches to an exterior makeover of this hard-as-nails heart-rimu beast. Driving 1000km in a single day is a challenge in any car and absolutely memorable on a motorcycle, but it often triggers plenty of aches, cramps, and pains in a performance-oriented car.
For example, the weighty oftenworshipped steering of a Porsche 911 is a source of driving pleasure for the first 400km of any singleday journey, but turns in some kind of ancient wrist torture from that distance on. Would the C 63 S pass the 1000-kays-in-a-day test?
Fortunately for the Merc-AMG, the multiple driving personas available through the Eco, Comfort, Sports, Sports+, and race modes enable it to be tailored to the mission of the moment. This allowed most of the long drive to be completed in ‘‘comfort’’ – the go-to mode for any driver in need of a little TLC.
And with the snarling exhaust of the V8 also able to be heard through three settings of differing volume and tone, the savagely beastly 375kW/700Nm engine could be turned into something of a hushed puppy as well. The comfort setting also lightened the action of the steering wheel so that the 1715kg C 63 S demanded no more wrist action to flick it through the turns than a 1300kg hatchback.
The stronger and more soundproof body of the coupe also allowed the musical nuances of my downloads to be picked out with more clarity by the Burmester surround sound audio system, although the steady thrumming of the Continental ContiSport SP tyres on the coarse-chip road surfaces still provided a rowdy background.
South of Opotiki is the place where this drive takes a turn for the wild and feral, and the settings of the C 63 S were quickly adapted to this new virtually-traffic-free roadscape, where the Waioeka Gorge twists and winds its way through 70km of regenerating native forest.
Many of Gisborne’s residents loath the gorge as it’s a driving obstacle that exaggerates the city’s isolation, but the Merc-AMG certainly found it a happy place. For it dispatched the constant corners with ease in the Sports setting that added a little more weight to the wheel and a little more resistance to the body roll management. The Sports+ setting was sampled briefly on the southbound trip through the gorge, and while the extra driver involvement in car control had some amusement value due to the more relaxed stability control intervention, the stiffer suspension and tiller action was a little too taxing.
As with all long journeys, the return leg in the afternoon to Orewa seemed to take less time despite cruising effortlessly through the gorge in Comfort. Then we hit the Auckland evening rush hour(s) with the traffic slowed to a crawl by heavy rain. It took 80 minutes to get from East Tamaki to the bridge, and the consumption of the V8 began its steady climb from the 11.0litres/ 100km average fuel use registered on the trip computer for most of the journey to 11.5 overall.
The important thing is that I still had a smile on my face despite the wipers ushering a bucket’s worth of rain away with every sweep, and an average motorway speed of around 8kmh. Few cars are capable of such grand touring feats, especially when the entire ‘‘gran turismo’’ is crammed into a single day.