What makes the S 63 Coupé so special is that monster of a 5.5-litre BiTurbo V8 motor. Yes, it’s made 544 PS, 557 PS and even 571 PS in the previous version of this very car, but, in here, it puts out a mammoth 585 PS and an even more gargantuan 900 Nm of torque. That’s more power and as much torque as the old Maybach cars, from an engine with a third less cylinders. All of that go is fed to the rear wheels through the AMG SpeedShift seven-speed multi-clutch automatic transmission. With prodigious output figures such as these, no one in their right mind could question its performance. While we are yet to put it to the test, Mercedes-AMG claim a 0-100 km/h sprint of just 4.2 seconds. Top speed is limited to 250 km/h. That attempts to justify the standard steel brake discs, rather than the carbon-ceramic ones.
Performance figures are one thing and actually going out and experiencing that performance is quite another. You can discuss bungee-jumping all you want, but when the cord is fastened around your ankles and you’re staring into the abyss, literally, that’s when the truth comes clawing at your sense of understanding. A 2,070-kg car that gets to 100 km/h faster than most sports cars can manage. The active bolsters offer reassuring support around the bends and respond to every sharp steering input. The acceleration feels effortless and even a slight prod of the accelerator leads to a lunge forward with authority. Even so, the ride quality is pliant and quite soft thanks to the standard air suspension.
Select ‘Sport’ mode and the exhaust turns into an orchestra of baritones and bellows. On the one empty road we managed to find in the nation’s capital, I got both windows-and-a-half down on either side, and then, pedal to the expensive carpeting far from the metal underbody, immersed myself in a bass-lover’s delight. The S Coupé thundered forward with the ferocity of an SL 63 AMG engine in a two-door Maybach, turning the palm-tree dotted scenery into fast-moving blurs. It reaches 150 km/h with ease and I realised would have kept on going for a hundred more were it not for the limited amount of road and the invariable arrival of a flea-brained road-user dead centre of the road, going the wrong way, no less.
The S Coupé has big brakes and the combination of 255-section and 285-section mixed rubber together offer loads of grip and bring the two-tonne leather lounge on wheels to well within school-zone limit speed in barely a couple of seconds. There’s no real need for those carbon-ceramic rotors now, is there? Don’t answer that. More braking power is always welcome with anything that packs 585 horses.
