Driving Impressions

Each C63 AMG engine is assembled by hand, emblematic (literally, as each engine gets a signature plate) of the attention that AMG gives each car it builds. The C63 engine is magnificent, hulking under that muscular hood in all its compact glory, 6.2 liters, 451 horsepower and 443 pound-feet of torque. Too bad it's totally covered by plastic chambers, runners and plenums, making you feel pretty silly to pop the hood and admire it. You can't see pieces like the magnesium variable intake manifold. All you can say is: Well, the engine is in there somewhere, and it's real powerful. With a redline at 7200 rpm, it sounds good, especially when your listening point is from another car and the C63 AMG passes you at 100 miles an hour. It sounds even better if it's black. If you want to fully enjoy the rumbling four-tip exhaust note of your own C63 AMG, you'll need to roll down your window a bit. From the closed cabin, it's pretty quiet. Those great gobs of torque are located surprisingly high, peaking at 5000 rpm, although it hardly struggles at lower rpm because 370 of its 443 pound-feet of torque is available at 2000 rpm. But it's at 4000 rpm that you really feel all that torque begin to stomp you. AMG says the C63 can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 4.3 seconds, while Car and Driver magazine tested it at 3.9 seconds. That's quicker than the BMW M3, although the M3 is lighter and therefore a bit faster around a race track. The C63 AMG is so smooth that 80 mph feels like 60, which is a great thing, except it makes the car a ticket trap. One hundred mph feels like 80. It doesn't take much throttle or effort to reach 100. You can get there in less than 10 seconds, and there might be jail, of course. What else could get you in that much trouble that fast, without leaving your seat? Besides a gun. Top speed is electronically limited to 155 mph, but the performance package unleashes the car to 186 mph. Speaking of jail. It's EPA-rated at 12 city and 19 highway miles per gallon, numbers boosted by the efficient engine and aerodynamics. Our gas mileage was 16.9 mpg, about half the time cruising at freeway speeds and the other half hammering it. You don't always know what you're going to get with a seven-speed Mercedes transmission. They're programmed to shift based on some engineer's belief of how the vehicle will be driven. But of course this isn't a Mercedes, it's an AMG. The transmission is right. All three modes, Comfort, Sport and Manual, are purposeful. Comfort shifts for you, at convenient and smooth places; it'll shift at redline, quickly. The Sport mode can be used appropriately, when you need the transmission to be a bit more aggressive; it doesn't kick down excessively, and makes rev-matching (throttle-blip) downshifts nicely. The Manual mode is true, as it should be. It does something many manual modes don't; it allows you to short shift, or upshift under heavy throttle at medium revs; or even lift off the throttle and upshift at the same time. That confuses many automatic manual transmissions, but not this one. We first drove a C63 AMG with the $3900 performance package, and found the ride uncomfortable over the harsh bumps, like weathered or cracked freeway expansion strips. After an hour in the passenger's seat, we were over it but couldn't escape it. We put our head back against the headrest, but the bumps bounced it off. It wasn't so bad in the driver's seat, but still annoying. So we got in a model without the performance package, whose front springs are 10 percent softer, but it was still harsh. We drove that model around town, and it took the bumps fairly hard, notably in one particular concrete drainage groove. A lot of German high-performance cars are developed on the Nurburgring, which makes their cornering fabulous. And that's what the suspension of the C63 AMG does best. AMG makes no bones abo

Final Word

The four-door, rear-wheel-drive Mercedes C63 AMG is a serious contender for the crown that the BMW M3 has worn for years, with more horsepower and acceleration for the same price. With a new AMG-designed suspension, its cornering is dynamic. It has giant effective brakes and a satisfying seven-speed manual automatic transmission with slick double-clutch rev-matching downshifting. The leather seats are beautifully bolstered. Its main drawback is the rigidity of the suspension, felt on sharp bumps. Sam Moses filed this report to NewCarTestDrive.com after his test drive of the C63 AMG in Arizona.