SA Road Tests

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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. I drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under real-world South African conditions. Most, but not all, the vehicles driven are world cars as well, so what you read here possibly applies to the models you get where you live.

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Dicing on the dark side: 2015 Mercedes-AMG C63s Edition 1

El Diablo returns

Posted: 22 November 2015

Boot and plaque pics by author

The numbers
Base price: R1 217 595
Edition 1 pack: R175 000
Other extras: R208 900
Price as tested: R1 601 495
Engine: M-B M177, variant E40DEH LA AMG
Specs: 3982 cc, chain driven quad-cam, 32-valve, V8 twin-turbocharged
Power: 375 kW between 5500 and 6250 rpm
Torque: 700 Nm between 1750 and 4500 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 4.0 seconds
Top speed: 250 / 290 km/h (governed)
Real life fuel consumption: About 12.3 l/100 km
Tank: 66 litres
Boot (without spare): 435 litres
Warranty and maintenance: 6 years / 100 000 km

The marksman’s way: Get completely comfortable. Regulate your breathing. Compensate for wind and distance. Take up the slack in trigger movement. Exhale fully, holding your breath at the bottom of the down stroke.  Squeeze gently.

Depending on target, distance, bullet size and load, the objective will be either punctured tidily or destroyed completely.

With the Mercedes-AMG C63s, things are a little different. Sitting comfortably and correctly, the way your advanced driving instructor showed you, is an obvious prerequisite. Beyond that, adrenaline probably rules.

The “trigger” is the one down in the bottom right hand corner. Mash it in deep and the car gathers speed gut-pinchingly quickly, reeling in distant horizons faster than you can imagine and that’s just in Comfort mode. Sport, Sport Plus and Race do it quicker.

The effect it has on your vision, your pulse rate and your bank balance depends mostly on innate skill, training, traffic volume, roadway engineering, surface conditions and pure dumb luck. If Officer Friendly zaps you, you will be poorer and make headlines. If you run out of talent - or a pedestrian, livestock or solid object intervenes, you will make radically different headlines. You and your precious possession, and possibly that of others, will be the objects destroyed.

 “Oh, I will only use that speed and acceleration on a proper race track,” you say. Forgive us for being a tiny touch dubious: What race track and when? There is no racing formula for million-buck V8s in South Africa. And if there was, would you really take your 1.2-bar pleasure machine, then strip it and race it amongst a bunch of hooligans who have their own particular ways of clearing unwanted traffic? We wouldn’t either.

But we do understand that sinfully raw power, perfect symbiosis of machine and roadway, rumbling V8 mechanical symphony and sharply delicious agony, sizzling from gonads to gut, can be addictive. And it makes every Rand spent exquisitely worthwhile; with bragging rights thrown in. Apart from that, it costs about a third as much as a Ferrari, so bang-for-buck is covered as well.

The last AMG C63 we drove was a 2012 coupé. The engine at that time was a 6.2-litre unblown V8, hence the C63 nomenclature; well sort-of. Later E, G, GL, S and SL cars wearing the 63 badge used a turbocharged 5461 cc engine. This latest version uses a 3982 cc V8 with a pair of turbochargers nestled into its V. It develops more power and torque than the 6.2 but a little less than the twin-turbo 5.5 does. It also uses less fuel than either.

There are two versions; the “plain” C63 develops 350 kilowatts and 650 Nm, while the C63s bumps those numbers up to 375 kW and 700 Nm. Other differences are slight and restricted to minor changes to trim and upholstery and an added, “Race,” setting in the “s” car’s Dynamic Select module.

Both can be ordered with an Edition 1 package. This adds two carbon fibre-look trim sets; two-tone design interior; contrasting top stitching on the upper instrument panel; a Night Package exterior appearance kit; special 19” wheels with red pinstriping; performance front seats with adjustable contouring for better support, integral head restraints with AMG lettering and quilted look panels with red stitching that’s repeated on the dash, the steering wheel and its top centre strip.

Our test car was a C63s Edition 1, painted boss-gangster Diamond White, an R18 000 option on its own. While she was at it, M-B’s press fleet manager added the R29 000 Driving Assistance Plus package that keeps you on the straight and narrow and away from other road users; electrical boot lid opening and closing at R3000; sun blinds for the back doors for a further R3000; a heads-up display (R15 000); the R14 900 parking package (sound and camera); keyless starting at R9500 and a button operated, bi-tonal performance exhaust system at R18 000. You automatically get added rumble in Sport+ and Race modes, but this option lets you growl at neighbourhood kids in gentler programs too. El Diablo is back!

You know that most fast cars are governed to 250 km/h. For a paltry R13 500 she specified the AMG Driver’s Package. That description is simply wool for pulling over Honey’s eyes.  What M-B really means is that the governing software is tweaked to bump top speed up to 290. And you will only use it on your own, personal, backyard racetrack? Yeah, right!

To tame all that deliciousness, she added carbon fibre-reinforced ceramic brakes at R85 000. The material is lighter and more heat- and wear-resistant so they last longer, require less pedal effort and reduce unsprung mass. That helps it to handle more crisply. The front discs are bigger too – 402 mm vs. the standard 390.
 
Unexpected o/e on both C63 cars is a spacesaver spare. It’s there because neither is fitted with run-flat tyres. Colour us gobsmacked. It’s wrapped in a smart canvas zip bag and comes with tie-downs to keep it secure. Its effect on boot capacity remains unpublished. But as long as you keep close to civilisation and major tyre dealers, you could probably leave it in the garage at home.

Standard kit includes three memory settings for each front seat, active parking assistance (self-parking), AMG Speedshift MCT-7 transmission, LED ILS headlamps, Comand Online navigation, Thermotronic automatic climate control, Burmester hi-fi and Pre-Safe. There are seven airbags and all the expected electronic handling aids.

In closing let us add that, exciting as the C63s Edition 1 is, it remains a personal car. That means it inherits the standard C-Class’s cramped rear compartment; made more so by the sporty front seats. When racked all the way down for tall drivers, no adult human being can fit feet beneath them – meaning that big-framed six-footers had better ride along in a backup B-Class because they won’t get into or out of El Diablo’s back seat. That space-stealing spare wheel could become an issue for family use too.

Test car from MBSA press fleet



Both C63 models are issued with spare wheels

What We Do

This is a one-man show, which means that every car reviewed is given my personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every test car goes through real world driving; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.

I do my best to include relevant information like real life fuel economy or a close mathematical calculation, boot size or luggage space, whether the space is both usable and accessible, whether life-sized people can use the back seat (where that applies), basic specs of the vehicle and performance figures if they are published. In the case of clearly identified launch reports, fuel figures are of necessity the laboratory numbers provided with the release material. If I ever place an article that doesn't cover most things, it's probably because I have dealt with that vehicle at least once already, so you will be able to find what you want in another report under the same manufacturer's heading in the menu on the left.

Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so they can see I do actually exist.

Comments?
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