superswiss

Just got back from Europe and had a great AMG Experience day on Friday at the Mercedes Test Center. Sorry, we weren't allowed to take pictures outside of the staging area due to all the proprietary stuff roaming around. It's an impressive facility. The whole thing used to be a tank training ground for the German Army until Mercedes bought it and turned it into their test center. They built a 60 km road network on it with road conditions from all over the world to test their cars, along with a quite technical racetrack that borrows features from many tracks around the world, and a high speed banked oval. We didn't get to drive on the latter and only drove on the normal roads to get to and from the staging area to the racetrack and the dynamic driving area. They had a photographer, so we are gonna get photos from the whole event eventually. We had one causality with one of the participants flying off the track and ditching one of the GTs in the gravel. They didn't get to participate anymore for the rest of the day, so my co-driver and I ended up each getting our own cars in the afternoon and didn't have to switch drivers throughout.

The fleet of cars consisted of the C63 SE, CLE 53, GT 63 and the EQE 53. If you are interested in my thoughts on the GT 63, check out my post there. https://mbworld.org/forums/coupe-roa...ml#post9033453. Most of what I said about the interior applies to the C63 as well, so I'm not gonna repeat it here. The C63 suffers from the same issues and as I said, I didn't like the new AMG performance seats as much.

So let's get to the elephant in the room. My group started out the day driving the C63 SE as the first car. I'm not gonna repeat what others have already said in previous threads. They are mostly on the money. I'm gonna focus on a couple of things I picked up that weren't mentioned before. First off, next to the CLE and GT, the C63 was the least impressive looking car. Rather boring actually next to the CLE 53 and GT 63 with their wide tracks and hips and stance. Not too surprising, as the AMG sedans never really made my heart beat faster. The biggest surprise was actually the CLE 53. More to that later, but a great looking car. Clearly resembling the C205, but dialed up 5-10%. Very aggressive looking and not as big as I expected.

As for the C63, on the positive side, it does a good job managing the weight. The suspension is great. It did well around corners on the track, but the weight was ever so present when braking. Felt like the rear wanted to pass the front when braking hard. Overall, they clearly worked hard on the suspension to make this thing handle decently. The other positive thing was that it sounded better than I expected. Admittedly, most of it was pumped in through the speakers, but to be honest, the lack of V8 sound was the least of my issues. We also didn't have any issues with the cars. Looks like they sorted out the turbo failures and such in the meantime.

However, let's get to the issues of this car. It's a definite hard pass from me. Driving it confirmed pretty much everything I said before and what others have pointed out. Full disclosure, I only drove it in S+ and Race to see how it does on the boil. Driving it in hybrid mode etc. isn't really interesting to me. This is a performance car, so if I wanted to drive in electric or hybrid mode, I'd get a normal hybrid for everyday driving. The performance driving is where this thing falls short. It is fast in a straight line as others have already said, so I give credit where credit is due. It's the fastest straight line C63 ever that's for sure. However, the biggest issue was all the lag in the powertrain, even in Race mode. For starters, the transmission shifted super harsh in Race mode. I mean I like when the transmission yanks in the gears when driving hard, but this was just harsh with no benefit. At the same time, the shifts were very delayed. I drove it primarily in manual mode as I do my own C63. Every shift in manual mode was delayed. I kept running into the rev limiter. Not just due to the busy instrument cluster and unintuitive rev gauge as I mentioned in my GT impressions, but also I had to shift well before redline to make sure the shift took place before it hit the rev limiter. It was back to what I hated about the 7-MCT. You press the paddle, but it takes a second or so for the shift to actually take place. This alone makes this car a no-go for me. My co-driver drove it in automatic mode, so other than the hard shifts, it shifted fine. So if you are mostly driving it in automatic mode, you may not find this to be an issue.

In addition to the delays of the main transmission, there was the delay of the 2-speed transmission on the rear axle. At 120 kph, it shifted to the 2nd gear and to do that it cuts power during the shift. It seemed to coincide with when I had to shift into a higher gear. Don't remember what gear, but at that moment I had the delay of the main transmission shifting, and then just as it finished the shift the car wouldn't actually go. Power gets cut for what seems an eternity until the rear transmission is in 2nd gear and then it finally takes off. It feels like traction control kicking in. All this really highlighted the complicated nature of the powertrain. You become aware that a lot is happening under the hood to coordinate the working together of the ICE and the e-motor with the two transmissions and you really have to ask what are the benefits of all this. On paper they boast great CO2 numbers during the WLTP cycle, but it's already come to surface that in the real world, this thing doesn't use less fuel than the predecessor, so the CO2 emissions are only good on paper. There's a thread in the AMG Private Lounge documenting that the fuel economy of the C63 SE isn't any better than the W205, so at the end of the day it spews out the same amount of CO2. I guess it gets better if you do all your daily driving in electric mode, but where's the fun in that?

I promised more on the CLE 53. The second car we drove after the C63 SE was the CLE 53 and therein lies the crux. I liked it much more than the C63 SE. It felt lighter on its feet and drove much better. It has less power obviously, but a much better response. I forgot just how nice an inline 6 engine feels. The transmission also was better, even though it has a torque converter. First time I preferred a torque converter over a clutch after driving the C63 SE. While still a bit laggy, it shifted better than the C63, but the whole thing was just so much more cohesive. No funky delays or power getting cut during a shift, and did I mention how nice an inline 6 feels? Some of the difference obviously comes down to coupe vs sedan. For starters the lower seating position in the CLE just feels better. It's just more of a cockpit feel in a coupe vs a sedan. I feel the same about the W205 vs C205. On top of that comes the lower roof line and the wider track. A coupe just feels sportier to drive. The CLE just hunkered down way better than the C63 SE. So some of this comes down to my preference for coupes over sedans. I don't really like the W205 sedan, either as far as the handling and driving feel goes compared to the coupe, but it doesn't have the powertrain issues that the W206 has. However, there's something to be said about the 53 having a better driving experience than the C63SE. I fail to come up with a good reason why one would buy the C63 SE over the CLE 53 other than needing 4-doors, but then the C43 might actually be the better car.

W205C43PFL

Very detailed impressions, thank you.