Mercedes AMG C63
The AMG C63 Returns: Behind the Wheel Of Germany's Monster M3 Killer
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The Enemy Within
The very first thing people will ask when you tell them you’re driving Mercedes-AMG’s hyperly anticipated C63 high-performance street sweeper is not about the car itself. It is about the competition.
"Is it better than the M3?!" was an interrogation I got hammered with when my first pics of the C63 started floating out on Instagram.
Sure, it’s a valid question. BMW’s M3 and AMG’s C63 are the dual nemeses of the performance-tuned “compact” sports sedan segment. Itchy & Scratchy, if you will. Brady vs Manning. Drizzy vs Kdot. They hate each other, but also fear and respect one another. Their very existence is defined by and against the other.
The RS4 would like to crash the party, but Audi evidently doesn’t feel their contender even merits American consideration. And Cadillac’s Corvette Z06-powered CTS-V will certainly warrant attention when it’s finally released this summer, but still… it has a lot to prove before it gets invited to Bavaria for Pichelsteiner and Spaten.
So in the coming months there will be endless tests conducted. Dynos will be overheated, tires melted, engines seized and racetracks painted black with tire marks. Oil and blood shed. Buff books will run endless comparisons and more digital and real ink will be spilt than coolant on the tarmac. A winner will emerge… depending on the judge.
But personally, the more interesting question isn’t how the AMG C63 fares against BMW’s best, but rather how it fares against itself. For the truth of the matter is that the biggest, fiercest, most salient competition Mercedes-AMG’s C63 will face is not from its Bavarian neighbors, but from its predecessor — the original C63.
For the C63 was not just an entry-level supercar. It was one of the best #everymansupercars the world had ever seen. It was a goddamn monster — the closest thing the Germans had ever developed to a bloody knuckled American muscle car. Its powerplant was the first engine designed entirely by AMG from the ground up (instead of using a modified Benz lump). The results were legitimately spectacular: a seemingly nuclear 6.2-liter V8 dubbed the “M156”. The last naturally aspirated V8 Merc would ever produce, the hand-built M156 became the most powerful unboosted production V8 ever made.
And all that power channeled straight to the rear wheels. Yikes.
But it wasn’t just about raw numbers. Being naturally aspirated, what made the M156 peerless was its personality. Brash, angry, insolent. The sound was like Odin’s coitus, amplified through Jimi Hendrix’s Marshall stacks. And since it lacked artificial boosting, its acceleration was linear, all the way to the top — a petroleum powered rocket booster. You could, and would, kick the rear tires out at yield signs.
Unsurprisingly, the C63 became the best selling AMG ever, moving more than 40k units in its first two generations (the “2nd-gen” C63 used the same engine, but received a significant enough update that it is considered a separate generation within Mercedes-AMG).
It is legend.
To Boost Or Not To Boost, That Is the Question
But these are different times. Post-efficiency times. A petroleum-chugging naturally aspirated furnace is no longer acceptable (with exception to the new Lexus RC-F). You can lament all you want, kick and scream and pour out a 40 in its memory, but it just ain’t happening.While BMW’s latest M3 has downgraded to an inline 6-cylinder engine, AMG felt adamant the C63 had to retain a V8 — although it dropped displacement from 6.2-liters down to 4.0. The results are a decrease in the cylinder bore from 102 mms wide in the M156 to 83 mms in the new M177 engine. That marks a dramatic difference in the volume of oxygen and petrol that can be shoved — a 19% reduction. It is a loss of volume partly mitigated by the bolting on of twin single-scroll turbochargers.
Of course, as every enthusiast in the world knows, turbos increase power only after they can spool up. This much bemoaned “turbo lag” differentiates a forced induction engine from a naturally aspirated one. In most serious high-performance cars this lag is anathema, the void of weakness. But in an AMG C63, a car that is defined by its unboosted powerplant, that lag is unacceptable.
“When we started with the turbocharged engine there were two main concerns: Don’t disturb the sound; we need this V8 sound. And we don’t want any turbo lag. So the customer must feel when he drives the car that it has a naturally aspirated engine. These two main targets we worked on from the very beginning of the project,” the head of AMG engine development, Christian Enderle, tells me when I questioned him about the challenge of following up such a treasured vehicle.
These were not ancillary issues to be resolved at some point down the road — they were fundamental challenges discussed from Day One, informing the entire development of the 3rd-gen C63. So Enderle and his team analyzed every aspect of the naturally aspirated engine, taking infinite measures of its composure to emulate the behavior. This was achieved not only by tweaking the engine and turbo development, but also crucially via the transmission, microscopically calibrating the spacing between each gear to create a linear acceleration — instead of the exponential one found in turbocharged cars. “Gear by gear by gear by gear by gear; every gear you must have measurements to ensure the acceleration curve is steady. And once you fulfill this target, you will have this feeling that it is naturally aspirated.
“And that is all,” Enderle concludes with quintessential German dryness. “When you know what to do, it is not so difficult.”