I'm looking at buying a C63S.

My old W212 E63 with MCT was really clunky at low speeds in any drive mode. It downshifted hard from 2nd to 1st when coasting to a stop. Benz dealer said it was normal.

I've read that the 9spd MCT in the C63S does the same thing. Has anyone here had that experience?

This was the worst thing about that car and one of one main reasons I sold it, so I'm curious how many of these cars also have that issue.

If it's common, was it ever resolved at any point in the lifecycle for W205 C63S, or face-lift C63 with the 9spd?

Thanks

 

No issues here with the 9-speed. It doesn't shift down to 1st unless I'm at a complete stop. It stays in 2nd when doing a rolling stop and I have to be at a complete standstill before it goes all the way down to 1st, so it's completely unnoticeable. I however also mostly drive in manual mode, so I control the shifts myself. Only way to really properly drive these cars, IMHO. Most of the time, harsh shifts come from incomplete adaptations or the transmission having learned a bad habit. Mine actually downshifted to 1st while still rolling when the car was new, but once I did more around town driving, it adapted and since then it does what I described above.

I was never a fan of the previous 7-speed partly because it starts in 2nd gear in Comfort mode, but I find the 9-speed awesome for a road performance car. It always starts in 1st, so you don't have to put it in Sport for just normal driving. It has proper response even in Comfort mode. Having said all that, due to the mechanical nature of this transmission, it will never be butter smooth. You need to modulate the throttle to smooth things out here and there, but having been driving manual transmissions for over 25 years, this is nothing new for me. If you are looking for a torque converter smooth daily, this is not it. It's smooth enough for what it is, and getting feedback from the transmission is part of the experience. If I wanted to be isolated from the driving experience, I'd be driving a dull S Class.

 

The 9 speed won't downshift to first when slowing down to a stop. It only goes to first when you completely stop.

It's a good transmission overall, but I feel like the tuning in comfort mode is not aggressive enough. Too many upshifts as you lightly accelerate, it should stay in gear more often rather than shifting up.
The transmission tuning in sport mode feels much better to me. Not as much needless upshifts when accelerating.

 

Yes, Comfort mode is the Mercedes mode as I kinda call it. It keeps revs low and quickly upshifts to higher gears. It works for me when just casually tooling around town at 25-30mph, stop&go driving or just cruising on the highway with DISTRONIC engaged. I occasionally use Sport when on roads with speeds closer to 45 mph and I have to slow down and start at traffic lights. Even though Comfort upshifts quickly, the car has plenty of torque to move even in 3rd or 4th gear driving just around the city, but as I said above, if I want responsiveness, I shift manually anyway. I have my Individual mode set up to put the engine in the respective S+ mode and the transmission in M. One press of the drive selector knob and the car is ready to go. I really like the steering wheel controls to switch driving mode etc. so much more driver focused than the old AMGs.

 

What about the 3-2 downshift? Is it smooth or does it abruptly downshift and jerk the car?
I'm not necessarily looking for s-class glassy smooth, but my E63 would lurch the whole car (and driver) when downshifting. Definitely 2-1, but it may have been 3-2 as well. If the 9spd does that ridiculous jerking with any downshift, that's a deal breaker for me.
The dealer reset adaptations multiple times and that fixed nothing, as far as the jerky downshifts were concerned.
Not interested in paddles. I'll either drive an actual manual, or I'll let the automatic shift itself. I find shifting an automatic with paddles a little sad, personally. If it's a good automatic, in my opinion, it should shift just as well or better than I can.

 

Now that I think about it... I don't think the 7spd MCT in my W212 shifted to first while in motion, either. So it was probably the 3-2 shift that was jerky.

 

No jerky downshifts whatsoever, but also not torque converter smooth to be clear. I can't really agree with your comment on manually shifting. Sequential gearboxes are the staple of race cars. F1 drivers shift with paddles, rally cars have sequential gearboxes. The only difference is that F1 cars for example have a paddle to manually operate the clutch at race start and the transmission doesn't have an automatic shift mode, but after that the shifting takes place w/o the driver having to operate the clutch. I agree with you as far as traditional automatics with torque converters are concerned. But the MCT in AMGs and DCTs in other performance cars are not your typical automatic transmission. They use clutches similar to a manual transmission with the difference that there's no clutch pedal to operate it. Driving these while manually shifting is equally engaging as an actual manual transmission, at least as far as the 9-speed is concerned. The 7-speed is too laggy for me. If you just want to stomp and go and let the transmission do all the shifting, then get a car with the ZF8. They are not for me, though. Some of us call this phenomena the Audification of performance cars. Basically watering down the experience. I have driven manual transmissions for over 25 years and still do when I get the chance. This car is only my second car with an automated performance transmission, but I don't really have a desire to go back to a fully manual, as the MCT provides most of what I truly like about a manual transmission, including that the engine bounces off the rev limiter unless I upshift. When ripping up a canyon road or doing any other real performance driving, paddle shifting is much faster. Outside of that I view the automatic modes as convenience. I let the transmission shift itself when I'm just doodling around, or cruising along on the highway with DISTRONIC engaged. Kinda the best of both worlds.

Anyway, I get the feeling that this car is not for you. An RS5 or an M3/4 maybe more down your alley. They all use the ZF8 these days. I had a 2013 RS5, that was my first performance car that didn't have a traditional manual gearbox, but it had a dual clutch. I came to AMG after that because both Audi and BMW M decided to abandon the DCT and go with the ZF8. Made the next RS5 very boring to drive. The loss of the high-revving V8 with 8500 rpm redline didn't help of course, but the Audi RS models are definitely more daily driving friendly and give you that not having to think smooth shifting w/o driver involvement.

 

Awesome. Hopefully no one else has that problem either.
This would be my 3rd AMG. Had a W212 E63 and a W204 C63. Sold both mostly due to their terrible transmissions. The MCT-equipped E63 for the comically jerky downshifts in traffic, and the 722.9-equipped W204 for it's generally weird behavior when driving quickly (was nice and smooth in traffic).
I've owned an F80 M3. Terrible steering feel, terrible exhaust sound. Driven an RS5. Put me to sleep. I love everything the W205 C63S has to offer, as long as it doesn't do the jerky shifting BS.

Don't need a dual clutch. I enjoyed the 7 speed MCT when I wasn't headbanging involuntary in traffic. If you search this forum you'll find multiple threads about this problem with that transmission in everything that came with it. My concern is that I've seen similar complaints about the 9spd MCT in other models (GLE450 specifically). I guess I just need to test drive one.

 

Yes, best you test drive one, but it also sounds like you lack some knowledge. The GLE 450 doesn't use the MCT. No non-AMG uses the MCT. The regular MB models have the 9G-TRONIC. That's a different transmission. While the MCT is based on the 9G-TRONIC, they are not the same. The 9G-TRONIC uses a torque converter. The MCT has the same planetary gearbox at the core, but it's paired with a multiplate wet startup clutch instead of a torque converter and very different programming.

The MCT is found in most 55 and 63 models, but not all. The GLE 63, GLS 63 and G63 don't use the MCT. They use the TCT, which is an AMG tuned version of the 9G-TRONIC complete with torque converter. Most 43 and 53 models also use the TCT, although AMG has started to put the MCT into the newer 43 models such as the C43, SL43 and GT43 (2-door only).

I'm aware that there are reports from owners of cars with the 9G-TRONIC having jerky downshifts. You can even find those reports from some S Class owners. The AMG TCT has also had its share of complaints. So does the MCT from some owners. S63 owners complain about the MCT for example, so do E63 owners. IMHO, the MCT is a bit of a mismatch for those cars. While they are performance cars, they are mostly family cars that are often daily driven in commuter traffic and such.

FWIW, I don't daily drive at all. I don't have a commute and on most days I walk, as the majority of my daily errands are within a 5-15 minute walk of my house. My car is mostly a weekend and road trip car, a GT (grand tourer) essentially. Love it on road trips on the open road, but I've said this before, a 63 isn't a great city or commuter car. I wouldn't have one for that. For driving to the city or doing an errand around town that needs a car, I generally use my wife' plain jane VW since she doesn't commute, either, so I have access to her car on most days. Just way more suitable for that kind of driving. AMG themselves have said as much. The 63 models are tuned for the open road and higher speeds, not slow city and traffic driving. That's the domain of the 43 and 53 models, which is why I found it odd that they started to put the MCT in the newer 43 models and they seem to have issues with making it work smoothly with the M139 4-cylinder engine. The C43 had complaints about jerky shifts since the press drives. Supposedly AMG was working on a software fix, but I haven't heard anything more about it. Specifically, in the C43 they found that certain driving styles cause the adaptations not to complete, resulting in jerky shifts. So this is partly why I mentioned earlier that jerky shifts often occur due to incomplete adaptations. Resetting the adaptations doesn't help if you then drive in the same manner all over again. This could be because the owner of the car mostly tools around with it in town, never stretching its legs for example so the transmission doesn't see different driving environments and styles. Another bad thing to do as I was told by AMG is to put it in Sport or Sport+ for mundane driving. This confuses the transmission because it thinks you want to drive sporty, but then don't actually drive sporty, so it doesn't know how you want to drive. This is part of why I do all my spirited driving in manual mode. I don't want to confuse the adaptations by sometimes driving spirited in automatic mode and other times driving moderate. My transmission only had to learn my moderate driving style and that's what it has adapted to, instead of trying to find a compromised middle ground between spirited and moderate driving. It's probably also worth knowing that I did European Delivery. I spent the first two months owning it in Europe, blasting around the German Autobahn the way it was meant to be driven, so I must assume that at least partly helped the transmission to learn and adapt. Grid lock driving isn't the best way to run these.

 

Here's a great vidoe that explains how the transmission works, in comparison with the transmission from the Konnigseg. Main point is halfway through as it explains why you feel that clunky driving in daily driving and why it's so awesom for fast shifts.

 

I understand how the wet clutch works, and I appreciate the quicker shifts. But there's zero excuse for the lurching downshifts I experienced in my E63. It would have been acceptable in a track car with a violent sequential gearbox. Not in a luxury sport sedan under any circumstances.

 

The Koenigsegg transmission while also called a a multiclutch transmission is mechanically very different from the AMG MCT. The AMG MCT uses a regular planetary gearbox at its core, not multiple gear pairs like the Koenigsegg transmission. Here's an older video on the 7-speed, but the 9-speed is constructed the same way, just with two more gear ratios.


Yes, and based on what I get from you, your experience isn't normal. Not sure why you experienced it in all of your AMGs. Might have something to do with how you drove them. You will feel the downshifts with the MCT, tough, that's just the nature of having a clutch. In Comfort mode it can make it fairly smooth, but there can be jolts. I wouldn't call them lurching, though. One other thing to know is that the MCT is sort of famous for multi gear downshifts, which can at times feel like a lurch. For example when I slow down it often drops from 5th straight to 3rd. That two gear downshift results in higher than expected engine breaking. It's not noticeable if you are hard on the brakes, but if you are moderately braking, then this two gear downshift can upset the chassis a bit. When I'm moderately braking, I also generally ease off the brakes when it's about to downshift from 3rd to 2nd. It removes the braking moment and makes the downshift smooth. This might be what you were running into. The 3rd to 2nd downshift can be a bit jerky depending on how much you are on the brakes. But this is a trait I'm used to from manual transmission as well. When coming to a casual stop with a manual transmission, I never downshift lower than 3rd gear. I simply declutch and let the car roll to a stop under brakes. I kinda wish at times the MCT would do that. The RS5's dual clutch transmission did that. When rolling to a stop casually, it simply declutched so the lower gear ratios wouldn't cause excessive engine braking. On the other hand, the MCT does a much better job at always being in the right gear. The goal of the MCT is primarily responsiveness for fast driving. That's not anything bad, that's just how it is. It can be fairly smooth considering this and for example on the rare occasion I find myself in stop&go traffic, I just let DISTRONIC do the driving. It smooths things out fairly well, or again I put it in manual mode and keep it in a higher gear and use engine braking to stay with the flow of traffic.

 

Only had the issue with the E63 with 7spd MCT.

The W204 was a pre-facelift car with a torque converter. All shifts were smooth as silk.

If you search this forum, or any AMG forum, reddit, Google, or anywhere else, you will find widespread reports of harsh downshifts with the 7spd MCT. Could be a common problem and not normal behavior for that transmission. But the Benz dealer claimed it was normal behavior.

If your 9spd was doing what I'm describing, you'd know it. It's not something that anyone would accept from a nice street car. The 2-1 downshift, which occurred at something like 8-10mph when slowing down, was the worst. Picture driving a manual transmission, and shifting from 2nd to 1st at 10mph without rev-matching. That's what I'm talking about.

 

Yep, exactly what mine was doing initially until it fully adapted. Took a few thousand miles for everything to fall in place. I also had a couple of ECU updates, so it's also possible they fixed something. BTW, I've also driven many other AMG models with the 9-speed MCT at various AMG Experience events. W213 E63, several GT63S 4-doors and the latest GT63 2-door. None of them had jerky shifts, and they were all properly broken in and had seen track time.

 

Good deal. What year is your car?

 

2019

 

One point regarding resetting the adaptations I wanted to make is that if you keep doing it, you never actually let the transmission finish adapting. Every time you reset the adaptations, it has to start over. To make this clear, let me give you the rough timeline of how mine played out. As I said, I did European Delivery and the first 6000 miles were mainly highspeed Autobahn driving, and long distance cruising. I did very little city/town driving. So after 6000 miles it still did that lurching 2nd to 1st downshift when coming to a stop around town. It took another maybe 1000-2000 miles until it finally adapted to city/town driving. So it took close to 10,000 miles before everything was behaving as it should. The adaptations are continuous and resetting them doesn't really do you any favor. You are better off if you let it do its thing by driving in the situations that you typically do and let it learn how you drive.

 

LOL What happened to "No rough downshift at all" and "It must have something to do with the way you drive" 🤣

So this is an issue with this transmission, but it should go away after adaptations are learned? Is that more accurate? What happens if/when adaptations are cleared for whatever reason? 10,000 more miles of hard downshifts?

 

I mentioned quite early that it was doing it at first. You may have missed that. Every car has a break-in period. While the official break-in period is only something like 1500 miles, the car isn't broken in at that point. Things need to loosen up more. Every performance car I've owned in the past hasn't come into its own until about 10,000 miles when everything has properly loosened and it opened up. As I said, it has something to do with how you drive. I didn't do much city driving during the first 6000 miles, so naturally the transmission didn't have a chance to adapt to city driving. Instead I drove the guts out of it on the German Autobahn and the Nürburgring during that time and it was shifting beautifully for that, however, that didn't train it for mundane stop&go city traffic driving.

So much about modern transmissions is fine tuning that happens once the car is driven by the actual owner. It's adapting the shifting to how it's being driven. The MCT is certainly rougher at first, but yes it will adapt to your driving if you let it, and the clutches will also wear in. Yes, if you keep resetting the adaptations, it may never get there, because you are constantly forcing it to start over. Not sure how it would have played out if I had the adaptations reset after 6000 miles, instead of just letting it adapt to the different driving style on its own. I'd like to think that what it learned during the initial 6000 miles in Europe is what contributed to how it drives today.

When I said no rough downshifting at all, that's today. Break-in period and adjusting to a different driving style after my ED trip doesn't count for me. That was just the necessary learning phase and breaking it in further. Point is I didn't take it to the dealership and complained about it. I just let it do its thing. For somebody else who gets this car and then starts driving it around town from day 0, it will play out differently. Point is there is a learning phase that you have to go through with the transmission. If you are unwilling to do that and consider this to be a problem, then I would steer clear of this car. However, at this point you won't be buying a new one anyway. So somebody else will have it broken in for you, but you will inherit it with a learned driving style that's different from yours.

 

I find that a bit disappointing, considering other high performance transmissions require no such break-in and have better street manners despite having higher performance. But I guess that's all well and good, assuming it's related to initial break-in and not something that happens every time adaptations are reset.

Still, I have a feeling that your issue was not as pronounced as mine, because you would have to be in serious denial to simply continue driving your brand new car with a problem like I had without bringing it back to the dealer. I don't think a car salesman has been born who could feed a rational buyer that kind of kool-aid. So my guess is that even your break-in-mileage issue was not the kind of problem I'm talking about. My E63 also had 40k miles on it when I bought it, so in my case it was likely not a matter of breaking-in a poorly-engineered wet clutch.

 

Perhaps you have never driven a Lambo Aventador. Try that if you think the MCT has bad street manners, or have you ever driven an M3 with the SMG? It's all relative and comes down to what you are looking for. Some performance brands break in the cars at the factory. McLaren is famous for that for example, so a client can theoretically go straight to the track after taking delivery of the car. AMG does zero break-in at the factory. They don't even fire up the engine once its built. I had a conversation with them about it when I visited the factory. They specifically wanna leave the full break-in to the customer. They only cold test the engine once its built. It gets put on a testing rig, where an external electric motor progressively spins it up to about 3000 rpm and then timing etc. is tested to make sure the engine was put together correctly. Then it goes on a shelf until an actual car is built when the engine is then delivered to the assembly line within a 4 hour window. It's fired up for the first time when the car rolls of the production line.

That's possible. Mine was more like somebody who hasn't quite perfected rev matching and is still learning. Either way, buying used with 40k miles is a whole other story. You don't know how the car was driven and treated before. Somebody was sure enjoying it with that mileage. If the issue was so bad as you described, who would drive 40k miles then?

 

I'm nowhere near fancy enough to have driven an Aventador, but I did just sell an SMG e46 M3 (which I converted to three-pedal manual). The downshift shock in my e63 was similar to an improperly driven SMG. In fact that would probably be the closest thing to it that I have experienced...downshifting an SMG from 2nd to 1st at a speed several mph too high for 1st. It felt like I was being lightly rear-ended by another car.

That's crazy. They are very confident builders! Although I imagine there is some sort of test drive done when the car is assembled.

From what I've found scouring the internet (and asked our AI overlords to gather for me), any harshness in the 9speed is significantly less harsh than what the 7speed does, and generally only occurs in S+. At this point I just need to drive the damn thing, really.

 

I have noticed a slight jolt when coming to almost a full stop when the car mode is in the Individual mode when the individual setting tthat is shown below. Otherwise no issues with the other settings. 2019C 63s coupe

It's always been this way. Maybe make some changing in the Individual mode setting?

The dial knob location is so convenient to switch from Slippery, Individual, Comfort, S, S+ and Race.

 

Yes, only way to know is to actually drive one. S+ has violent upshifts under WOT. It's a good violence. It kicks you in the back when upshifting. Super fast shifts. You'd expect Race mode to be even more brutal, but on the contrary. Shifts are super smooth in Race mode. Extremely quick, but smooth. Makes sense, as on a track the last thing you wanna do is upset the chassis during a shift. The differences between the modes makes it clear that things are on purpose.