While it’s true that ‘less is more’ can seem a bit reductive when dealing with tightly regulated and highly proprietorial performance cars, it is also true that the flagship AMG-badged C-Class was based on a simple formula. It had a V8. And just any old V8 - the model went from 4.3-litre to 5.4-litre to 6.2-litre to twin-turbo 4.0-litre in less than 20 years. The salient point of this arms race was not hard to grasp: the C63, as it would eventually be called, was like The Guns of the Navarone. AMG-TNT. A walled-up Germanic thunderclap. And while it did get more complicated (and better) over time, its fundamental brawn-over-brains recipe did not change.
With up to 680hp and 752lb ft available in the latest version, one could hardly accuse Mercedes-AMG of forgetting the brawn. But with one eye on the future, it has opted to get frantically busy with the brains side of things, too. In case it slipped your memory (and honestly it might’ve done given it’s been nearly 18 months since the model’s European launch) the C63 S E Performance is now electrified courtesy of a small but extremely fast-charging 6.1kWh battery and a rear-mounted 204hp electric motor. You also get a switchable, torque-vectoring four-wheel-drive system and four-wheel steer for the first time. Oh and a large, lag-minimising turbocharger. Fitted to a 476hp four-cylinder engine.
The result, collectively speaking, is cleverer than a crammed conference room at AWE Aldermaston. It looks the part, too. The C63, like the rest of the Mercedes C-Class, has never been sleek or particularly seductive. The best AMG efforts have always been three-part function, one-part aerodynamic knuckle duster, and that’s what you get here. The wagon, driven here in the UK for the first time, is more pleasing to look at the BMW M3 Touring, more foreboding than the Audi RS4 Avant. A low bar in both respects, perhaps, but empirical evidence that deep down Mercedes-AMG still knows what we want. Even if the C63 S E Performance, by definition, is partly about denying us what we like.
You can read a more detailed account of how the sophisticated petrol-electric powertrain fits together in Cam’s earlier test, but you will not need to return there to know that the controversial halving of the C63’s cylinder count was received in less than glowing terms. Predictably, this has little to do with outright speed. Mercedes-AMG claims a 3.4-second-to-62mph time for the Estate, and thanks to the always-on nature of the electrical assistance and the leash-straining 2.0-litre M139, it is probably good for it. But no one accustomed to the snarl of its predecessor’s turbocharged V8 (much less the tumultuous sound of the old 6.2-litre unit trying to work itself free) is going to relish either the absence of very much noise or the paper-thin presence of a four-pot downshifting.
This party-pooping sense of loss is hardly novel among hybrids, but for all the time you drive the newest version, the C63’s erstwhile reputation as a lovable hot rod is very much the monkey on its back. Looking like a linebacker dressed up for court and sounding very much like something coming up a NASCAR pit lane was less a multi-generational calling card than it was the C63’s entire reason for being. And even if Mercedes-AMG would quibble with that description, it is clear within no time at all that the E Performance delivers on one aspect but not the other. Or at least not in the irresistible way the V8s did.
There are other things it cannot do. The unexpected leniency of the dampers in Comfort mode - one of eight drive settings - is fine on a motorway, but more often than not the body control goes south on B roads, and its tendency to bob under duress doesn’t prevent the wagon from being jostled by sharper edges. Sport mode doesn’t solve the problem either, or not to the degree you’d hope anyway. Consequently, there’s a fair chance you might opt to spend at least some of your time with the suspension in Sport+ mode with everything else wound back to normal. This doesn’t do much for the tetchy secondary ride, although it does at least make the C63 a more cohesive thing to drive fast.
This, assuredly enough, it will do. In fact, given its failure to live up to the belt-fed, point-and-squirt charm of its predecessors, you’re often better off embracing the hot hatch-donated engine and gizmo-laden chassis, and inviting the C63 onto its door handles. In Race, there is a funky, telemetry-guided ‘Boost’ mode located under the kickdown switch for use on track, but you won’t need to get anywhere near that to know that the electric motor (and electrified turbo) are going gangbusters to make four cylinders seem like eight. The M139 itself, turned longitudinally here and mated to the nine-speed Speedshift MCT, can’t summon the elan or the effortlessness of the departed V8, yet it copes manfully with more than two tonnes of estate car - and by the time you get to anything like high revs, you’re typically going very fast indeed.
The chassis takes all this in its stride much more effectively than it does a bumpy road. The E Performance’s kerbweight is never not a factor because it feels like a big lump - certainly it slows down like one - although with the battery and 30-odd litres of cell coolant located out back (taking a sizeable chunk out of the available boot space, it must be said) it is suitably well balanced and isn’t hard to get turned in with the rear wheels doing their thing. That none of this seems entirely natural isn't a great surprise, but there is hardly any doubt that all that torque is being electronically shuffled around to good effect - assuming you’re chiefly interested in keeping your £100k estate car emphatically glued to the road. There is a Drift mode, of course - although much like everything else about the new C63, it is much less tempting to experiment with than the laugh-o-meter rear axles of its more recent forerunners.
Mercedes-AMG might argue that all this familiarity with the past is not something that will afflict every buyer, and is therefore of limited value. Probably it imagines a certain sort of grown-up tech bro thinking the E Performance version right on the money in terms of look and power and P11D value. And if we agree that such an audience exists, the manufacturer cannot be censured for building a car to satisfy it. In fact, on the basis that very powerful four-cylinder hybrids are almost certainly to become a significant part of the landscape, there is something to be said for facing the problem head-on, and with no small amount of resource or technical ingenuity.
Nevertheless, its introduction in the C63 - arguably the talisman of the entire Mercedes-AMG lineup - is harder to credit. Legacy is no less important a commodity than innovation, and the firm’s four-cylinder solution to its powertrain quandary simply isn’t exciting enough to adequately succeed the V8 engines that established the car’s reputation in the first place. Nor, frankly, with just 7 miles of electric range and a highly optimistic 38.7mpg combined figure, is it persuasive enough from a running cost standpoint.
It doesn’t seem unreasonable to suggest that had the four-pot hybrid system been squeezed into something smaller and lighter and less encumbered with long-term eight-cylinder prestige, it might have proved much easier to like. The M139 engine, after all, is considered a humdinger in other settings, and there’s still something to be said for hybrids that aren’t trying desperately hard to be hybrids. Like the new Porsche 911 GTS, for example. Or, indeed, the Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S E Performance, which shares exactly the same configuration of battery and rear-mounted electric motor, except with the 4.0-litre V8 as its running mate. Beyond the prospect of an even bigger asking price, quite why the C63 couldn’t have shared a similar setup is hard to fathom. Probably Mercedes-AMG has spent the last 18 months asking itself the same question.
SPECIFICATION | MERCEDES-AMG C63 S E PERFORMANCE 4MATIC+ ESTATE
Engine: 1,991cc four-cylinder, turbocharged plug-in hybrid
Transmission: 9-speed automatic, all-wheel drive
Power (hp): 680@6,750rpm (system output)
Torque (lb ft): 752@5,250rpm (system output)
0-62mph: 3.4 seconds
Top speed: 168mph
Weight: 2,190 (EU)
MPG: 38.7mpg
CO2: 156g/km
Price: £101,105
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