The Dark Side of Benz
Take a Mercedes, any Mercedes, add three letters and some numbers at the end that don't have any relation to the car in any way - you have a bonkers machine that can rip holes in time, space, and wallets.
AMG has been doing this for about four decades now, and they're quite brilliant at it. Every part of the Benz range has been fettled by these madmen, and even though they're as German as it gets, AMG Benz's aren't the precision tools you'd expect them to be. All of them are hooligans, muscle cars designed to go sideways and eat tyres as fast as possible. This week, they've released what seems to be, at first, the best dressed and most high tech tyre muncher they've ever made.
The 2017 E63 AMG has a 4 litre twin turbocharged V8 in the S version that produces, wait for it, 612 HP. Six Hundred Twelve. That's more power than most entry level supercars and matches Lamborghini and Ferrari outputs. It still has four doors, incredible level of tech that'll make you feel old even if you're a 20 something year old and will encase you in a luxury cocoon that you'll never want to get out of.
0 to 100 km/h will take 3.4 seconds, an incredible number considering it weighs little over 1.5 tonnes. But that doesn't mean it won't be economical - all versions of the E63 AMG come with cylinder deactivation and ECO start-stop tech that maximises efficiency and minimises thirst.
The biggest change comes in the power delivery system. Unlike any other E class AMG before it, the new model comes with a feature that might just alter the whole dynamic of an E class AMG Benz. It comes with All Wheel Drive, which will make it extremely difficult to do the traditional burnouts and engage in tyre ruining hooliganism in the corners. The power delivery will be variable between the front/rear wheels, which means it might just be a precise track tool yet.
Or just give it to Jeremy Clarkson and he'll find a way of sliding it.
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