The facelift Mercedes-AMG S 63 Coupe has an aggressive front end and an even more aggressive V8 engine behind it. Just how much is too much?
Story: Jim Gorde
Photography: Saurabh Botre
Red leather everywhere. One of my two favourite applications for it is a car’s interior; never mind the other. And, when paired with that carbon-fibre trim across the dashboard, door panels, and centre console, there is more than a hint of excess. This is the cream of the crop. This is it. You’ve arrived. This is maximum Mercedes.
Okay, the Maybach S 650 would theoretically be the maximum, but this, the Mercedes-AMG S 63 Coupe, offers just about every excess possible in terms of luxury and performance parameters. There are Swarovski crystals in the headlights, OLED units in the tail-lights, perforated leather upholstery inside, and carbon-fibre elements inside and out, with 900 Nm of peak torque going through a nine-speed, dual-clutch, automatic transmission to the two rear wheels, wrapped in 285/35 R20 rubber. A pair of blacked-out twin exhaust headers and the carbon-fibre aero work along with them are the final bits of detail. The Panamericana front grille is one of the big changes, making for an aggressive persona, which, when you consider the demonic exhaust roar in Sport+ mode, complements it perfectly. Speaking of which…
The new Mercedes-AMG S 63 Coupe gets the 4.0-litre, biturbo petrol, V8 engine; a derivative of the unit seen in the AMG GT line of sports cars. It makes 612 PS and 900 Nm. That’s 27 PS more than the 5.5-litre biturbo V8 in its predecessor, but the same peak torque. The AMG 9G Speedshift MCT nine-speed multi-clutch transmission handles power transmission duties to the rear wheels. That’s right. The left-hand-drive versions get the 4MATIC + all-wheel-drive system, but these right-hand-drive ones don’t. More madness and less method it is!
No real need to fret, for there are drive modes, a three-way ESP (Electronic Stability Program), multi-link front and rear suspension with air springs, adaptive damping with separate controllers for compression and rebound, 285-section rubber on 20-inch wheels, and one little pedal that your foot goes on to. Is that really enough, though?
With climate control off, Sport+ engaged, left foot on the brake, and right foot on the gas, we were ready to sprint. Lift off and the cacophony of tyres screaming for their lives and blaring V8 exhaust note are soon accompanied by blitzing speed. The engine data read-out, selectable from the Dynamic Select menu in Vehicle settings, showed a peak 820 Nm, gradually dropping to as low as 500 Nm as the S 63 picked up speed and gained momentum. The time of 5.3 seconds from zero to 100 km/h is about what one can expect in the real world with this sort of monstrous torque. Excess? You betcha! No more than 600 Nm or even 700 Nm is really needed for all the acceleration in the world for a car of this size. The rest, I believe, can be attributed to the need for having bragging rights. I can only imagine the load on the transmission were it not for the traction control softening the brutal twist.
