Mercedes-AMG E 63 S 2017 Review

Understanding the raw appeal of the Mercedes-AMG E 63 S can be captured in one brief act. Just find yourself a nice, safe stretch of flat and straight road and accelerate from zero to 100km/h.

Use the Race Start function if you can.

So go to Sport, Sport+ or Race mode, then feet hard on the brake pedal and throttle pedal. Listen to the revs rise and then plateau, the exhaust spitting and gargling. Then brake off, throttle flat and go.

Your head slams back into the seat and your chin compresses into your neck. With an involuntary grimace on your face, the car points skyward like a dragster that’s lifted its front wheels into the air. You can sense the bitumen tearing under the tyres.

Then it settles but continues to gather force and noise, your head still slammed, the involuntary grimace still stuck in place.

In 3.4 seconds it’s all over. That’s Mercedes-AMG’s claim for the 0-100km/h sprint and that’s what this car can achieve. I know, because I have done it and seen it done, over and over again.

Brute force channeled and corralled in an astonishing fashion. That’s the E 63 S 4MATIC+. It is so AMG in its aggression and masculinity, yet the shift from rear- to all-wheel drive for this new generation means there’s also more control for more of us than its lunatic predecessors provided. After all these years the E 63 is still crazy, but now super-smart with it.

We’ve gone into detail about what Benz’s performance and technical gurus at Sindelfingen have got up to in delivering the latest E 63 to us here and revealed the very competitive pricing here.

Well, more competitive than its predecessor anyway, with pricing cut by at least $10,000, the model range doubled to two and the amount of tech, power and torque boosted significantly.

Here we’re testing the upper-spec $239,900 E 63 S, which goes on sale in June. The standard E 63 arrives in December.

At the heart of both cars is AMG’s modular ‘hot-vee’ bi-turbo 4.0-litre V8. It makes 450kW and 850Nm in the S (up 20kW and 50Nm over the magnificent old 5.5 turbo V8), mates to a nine-speed Speedshift MCT automatic and drives all four wheels via the new 4MATIC+ AWD system.

This is a big change for the Aussie version of the E 63, which in right-hand drive was previously only rear-drive. The AWD system is fully variable yet rear-biased and can even be tuned to drive the rear wheels only via ‘drift mode’.

An electronically controlled limited-slip diff helps turn-in, while the chassis package is completed by active engine mounts, three-stage air-sprung suspension, a widened track, big 390mm/360mm brakes with six and four-piston callipers (ceramics are optional on the front for $9900), matt-black cross-spoke forged wheels 20-inch rims and staggered Pirelli PZero rubber.

So what does all that add up to? Well my colleague Michael Taylor was clearly impressed when he reported from the global launch in Portugal. A fair amount of time on-track allowed him to explore the limits – both longitudinal and lateral – and come away declaring this the greatest AMG of them all. Ever. Heady stuff.

But our launch drive here in Australia didn’t really allow such on-the-limit experimentation. There was no track session so no drift mode play, just a fairly straight-forward cruise through the countryside north of Melbourne that didn’t really give the E 63 S a chace to demonstrate much more than it is livable as a Comfort-mode cruiser.

Except, except. There was a dash over the wonderful Reefton Spur. Lots of hairpins, lots of 90-degrees, lots of closing radii, lots of jagged edges and mid-corner bumps. And lots of damp and slippery surfaces under the overhanging gums.

Yet the E63 S channeled all that power and grunt front to rear and side-to-side without fuss. Maybe once or twice I over-estimated a corner entry speed, but each time the car coped with the late and more harshly applied braking force and the extra pressure on the front-end and simply turned.

Exuberant use of the throttle on even greasy surfaces on exit was rewarded with traction and acceleration, rather than slideways and sphincter puckering.

Wind up through the modes and the E 63 S’s body control tightens from, well, tight to super-squeezy. The throttle switches on and the steering goes from a little slack-jawed in Comfort to tactile, sharp and surprisingly light for a car of that is nearly five metres long and weights in around 1900kg.

Sportify the transmission and it gets so aggressive there’s no need to worry about manual shifts (via paddles only, remembering this car is nine-on-the-tree). But you flap the paddles anyway because the AMG Performance exhaust is now spitting bullets on any downchange and firing off mortar shells on the over-run. What a maliciously joyful staccato.

Between corners your confidence grows to the point where mashing the throttle is the only course of action. You just have to enjoy that wild engine thrust and ridiculously addictive noise.

It’s stuff like that ensures this car, for all its capability and trustworthiness, retains that elemental AMG machismo and unruliness that is absolutely intrinsic to the success of the brand. It is impossible not to love this car and simply want to go and drive it the long and winding way home.

And on the way stop on that short, flat road and hammer the throttle just for the hell of it, and the sheer awesomeness of it.

So I guess I should at least pay lip service to other bits of the car. The non-driving bits. Apparently that’s important to some people...

The interior is high-quality of course, based as it is on the latest mainstream W213 E-Class sedan. The steering wheel is thick and flat-bottomed, the column shifter releases plenty of storage space, the trim is wood, stitched leather and all that good stuff. There is genuinely enough space for four adult passengers as well as a fifth stuck in the middle-rear. The boot is a substantial 540 litres but doesn’t have split-fold rear seat access.

In the cabin there’s the brilliant Widescreen Cockpit which covers two 12.3-inch LCD screens in one sheet of glass. The graphics are brilliant, but there is so much personalisation capability here it boggles the mind, including multiple choice instrument panels that in turn can have different wads of information contained in them.

To be honest I’d need a full-on session with a product expert to truly grasp it. It’s probably easier to plug in your smartphone and go Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. TBH, I couldn’t make CarPlay work LOL, etc…

Equipment? The E 63 S sits at the top of the E-Class range so there’s no shortage of gear here. That means it comes standard with a heap of driver-assist systems that allow semi-autonomous functionality for limited hands-free driving on well-marked roads with gradual curves.

There are also nine airbags (as per all Es), three-zone climate-control, a digital TV tuner and a panoramic sunroof.

And there’s also cylinder deactivation that allows the engine to run on four cylinders. Benz claims 9.3L/100km. We got 17.7L/100km. So around 12-13 is probably a legitimate average.

So if you’re hunting around for negatives about this car, that thirst is definitely one. The anodyne behaviour in Comfort mode is another. But, seriously, you can fix that with a flick of the finger and dial it all in via the Individual mode. And the exterior styling may be too conservative for extroverts.

But, to be frank, real negatives are in short supply in this car.

Its great ability, strong character and clear purpose means it lives up to the AMG mantra of accessible, burly and stunning performance. What a car.

It reminds us yet again that while some performance sub-brands are first and foremost marketing exercises, AMG is the real deal. It is undoubtedly global petrol-head HQ.

Mercedes-AMG E 63 S pricing and specifications:
Price: $239,900 (plus on-road costs)
On sale: June
Engine: 4.0-litre V8 turbo-petrol
Outputs: 450kW/850Nm
Transmission: Nine-speed auto
Fuel: 9.3L/100km (ADR Combined)
CO2: 212g/km (ADR Combined)
Safety rating: TBC