The £56,000 question
Used battery-electric Model S or very, very petrol-powered C43 AMG Coupe? (Clue: if long, remote drives are your thing, this isn’t di‡icult)
MY C43 AMG and Tim Pollard’s Tesla Model S take very different approaches to getting to North Wales, coming as they do from polar approaches to motoring. Driving up through the increasingly precipitous passes, the Mercedes howls, spits, barks and shrieks its way over, warming to its task, getting ever more boisterous as it goes.
Tim, on the other hand, makes his approach like a hunter after a bag of a lifetime, creeping towards his goal steadily, silently and extremely patiently. Tesla chargers are sprouting throughout the UK like mushrooms after rain, but they haven’t infested North Wales in profusion yet and if the car’s to give any account of itself Tim’s forced to hoard charge or we might need a very, very long extension lead. Or a tow truck.
Tim stops wherever he can find a few minutes of electricity in order to arrive with more than half a charge, but to my mind the tiptoeing nature of his drive, and then everybody’s kid-glove handling of the car on location, sums up the issue with electric cars, even ones as advanced as the Tesla, in that you have to accept some fairly major compromises in the way you use them.
Unsurprisingly, the Tesla’s not the ideal tool for a Welsh B-road either, due to its prodigious size and rather flaccid handling, and the conditions being about as far from California as you might get. That said, the instantly delivered, muscular torque is impressive in the vigour with which it hurls you towards the scenery, but at the close of the first day it’s left to Tim to expertly nurse it towards a plug. And the cabin isn’t ageing very gracefully – Ben Whitworth and I agree it’s starting to look a bit homespun and tired: wrinkling leather and inordinately scuffed scuff plates. It’s an approved used car, but at only 20,000 miles shouldn’t look this worn.
By contrast, the C43 feels great inside. When it comes to driving it, the Waltons and Barrys of this world have faint praise for the Merc, wishing it were a C63. But those whose driving is less Group B in commitment (including me) are much more positive. It’s a car that offers a great, lively experience, if not total AMG immolation, which I think is rather its point. It even makes Anthony ffrench-Constant smile and swear cheerily about it at 9am without a full complement of coffee and nicotine on board. This may be its crowning achievement.
THE C 43 EVEN MAKES ANTHONY SMILE CHEERILY AT 9 AM