2021 Mercedes-AMG GLS 63 vs BMW Alpina XB7 // $175K Performance Monsters Face Off

okay it's getting serious now ever since we started doing naught to 60 tests in our reviews something about thomas is getting very competitive and he's in the alpena today and i'm in the gls amg and the gls is heavier even though thomas is heavier than me i gotta do what i can to bridge that gap to give myself every advantage because if i know thomas he's doing everything he can too and he's crafty you're watching throttle news i'm thomas i'm james and this is the alpena xb7 and this is the gls 63 amg if the idea of an s-class suv in full amg form sounds expensive that's because it is expect today this wonderful example graciously loaned to us by performance mercedes-benz instant catharines costs a whopping 175 000 canadian or about 150 grand us but if you're entering a side by side with an alpena you have got to have your best foot forward that's right because for five grand more you can own something truly special alpena isn't just a trim level or an aesthetic package it's a fully retuned bmw by the wizards at alpena which is technically its own brand except now you can build one right on the bmw website we do car reviews track tests and quite a lot of messing around so subscribe and hit the bell in the gls oh with great v8 comes great power and we're going to try not 60. mercedes claim 4.1 got the draghi all right slightly slow off the line went into the power there and that's the 60 what we got 4.7 all right it's cold who cares about off the line speed when you have that sound and there's a concussive shock under my feet on every shift it's aggressive 627 pound feet of torque and yeah it's got almost 6 000 pounds to move but this thing is no joke it has 603 horsepower 603 that's cute this has 612 and it is the ultimate form of the x7 and some of you might be wondering thomas and james why didn't you bring the mybach gls because it's the ultimate form of the gls and well one word performance since there's no x7m both the amg and the alpena are the most performance focused versions of these vehicles in fact alpena started back in the day making tuning parts for bmw race cars so yes it is very luxurious but it is also very very quick and all indulged james the uh claim 0-60 time is four seconds so we've got traction control off left foot on the brake foot down launch control active and off we go clean time is four seconds let's see what we've got he says 4.23 what's up easy peasy no problem on winter tires [Music] so this engine is the familiar 4.4 liter twin turbo v8 the bmw was a lot of their stuff but alpena has taken it and they've added larger twin scroll turbos they've added alpena specific intercoolers and different cooling stuff than a stainless steel exhaust system so it makes more power and it makes power smoother and lower than i'm used to i have to say that this is a pretty fantastic engine it pulls immediately and powerfully all the way to the red line i like the sound awesome it's just awesome i really wasn't a fan of the x5m competition and honestly i got in this car prepared to hate it and i don't i actually love it now alpina's philosophy has always been to add power and keep comfort because it's for touring it's for long distances and that's exactly what this is bmw has a habit of when they put an m badge on a car especially an m badge with a competition badge on a car yeah it's very powerful and it handles very well but they absolutely ruin every other aspect of the car this is not the case here this is comfortable you can cruise in it all day and even though the suspension's a little wallowy in comfort mode in sport it doesn't crash over the bumps very badly and it controls its mass perfectly also as you go through the modes when you go to comfort sport sport plus it hunkers down on its alpena specific air suspension further and further each time by the time you're done in sport plus the thing is freaking slammed and it goes around the corner like a car i don't understand how they've managed to make this particular vehicle feel like how i thought the m5 competition should feel because that's what it is steering is sharp handles its mass perfectly it has a limited slip differential for god's sake and the regular x7 doesn't even get that it's actually fun to drive this has the zf8 speed transmission that has been alpena tuned and it has these little buttons on the back of the steering wheel to change the gears as opposed to paddles the transmission isn't outrageously aggressive but it is smooth and it fits the car's personality perfectly yeah but i've got more gears this is a nine speed and around town in comfort it's a little bit jerky but it's far more performance focused than the zf in thomas's but this is as much a gls as it is a 63 amg and this gets adaptive air suspension as standard so i have it in sport plus right now so it's like 40 stiffer but you drop it into comfort and does it become an s-class no not really actually um quite troubling it's just it's a bit jiggly you know you feel like you're in a bowl full of jelly sometimes but what thomas doesn't have and this has is the 48 volt electric system the eq boost so that actually does a bunch of things first of all when it comes to the suspension that system powers the active anti-roll bars again better in theory than in practice i think but what it also does is provide torque and horsepower through the range and when i put my foot down it makes power delivery smooth although i have to say i'm not really feeling the electric torque that normally covers that gap when i put my foot down there is a delay and sometimes when cars are mild hybrids the best thing about it is it provides torque in between turbo lag this still feeding the land but where those anti-roll bars do come in is when you're cornering and you turn into these corners the car just does it and it seems to lean in the body roll is so minimal so with the air suspension and the sharp steering this car gives you way more confidence going into a corner than a 6 000 pound three row thing should ever do is it necessary no is it fun yes never did i think it would be fun to row through the gears in an suv [Music] it's it's cannon fire it's cannon fire coming out the back man i'm sure that james is having fun in that gls 63 but this is just the way it's put together somehow this is peak modern bmw that requires a bit of an explanation this is an alpena and this is a modern bmw m car they both start with the same baseline ingredient that is good luxury and insulation in the form of this ice cream and then they add build quality nothing wrong with that they go together perfectly the thing is is that the m division lately adds all of their normal m stuff to this that is out and out lap times tire smoking drifts performance um factory really good put that in there and then they blend the whole thing together this is the x3m competition or the x5m competition or the m5 competition slightly compromised the ride's too harsh or it's too insulated to really enjoy the m aspect of it alpena has taken a totally different approach this is their version of performance when you mix these together you end up with a totally different end result that all kind of goes together better now that is something that i would be interested in trying and this while all the ingredients are good this doesn't quite work hey smoothies oh yeah no is this banana no yes you know me so well bathwater yeah it is so that might have all been a ruse to get james to eat a hamburger milkshake but the point is is that alpena tuned the x7 in such a way that it complements bmw's current set of strong points while we've noticed that modern m bmws with the exception of the m2 are a bit too insulated or numb in car form or too harsh in suv form the alpena tuned x7 strikes the correct balance so before we parked up to talk about the styling i grabbed the alpena to see what thomas was on a boot and he had a good backroad blast in the gls 63 amg conversation in the headlights again why'd you take me to a christmas tree farm oh i don't know like alpena alpine it was trees oh no i'm sorry to be appropriate anyway this was interesting is it because it was better i wouldn't you know i think better it drives better the important takeaway from today is that these just have just so much presence you know and they look very german but if you were to infiltrate the dealer find the supplier right okay in an ice cube yeah you'd find out these are both actually assembled in the southern united states yeah they're american yeah this is south carolina and this is alabama so forrest gump and a gls-63 amg is is yeah is what alabama's given us to be fair i mean like the three-row suv is a very american thing yeah no i agree and i think you know it's weird we just got out the palisade the hyundai panasonic the kia telluride yes it's the baby three rowers yeah and i think that maybe they're better looking than these this is a cluster okay so bleep that out right that is the first time i've ever heard you swear no it's not even on throttle house shut up you're just so i'm sorry this is okay first of all the thing that makes me so upset about this grill uh we've complained about it before is that now that this is this is the small grill now it's not the smallest it's the smart have you seen the ix i have seen the ix yeah no it's an instagram store there's like a punch in the gut this is awful like this also the chrome lips do not help this no i really think you're onto something with that because the palisade had the chrome around it whereas the amg grille you know credit to the designers it's hard to put design on things this size yes and i think amg do a better job with it with the chrome on the top of the chrome on the bottom this is a bigger grille but it doesn't look bigger because it doesn't have the the chrome this is like a fence well you know what these aren't in their best specs like you can get the alpena in like a blue yeah green and i mean what are these wheels i am the ones on the outside of the wheels no they're not nothing it was the signature wheels they don't even change over time and these are just these might actually be the alpena winter wheels i don't actually know that for sure but this is what bmw gave it to us on but yeah i know the lp i was so excited because we're getting an alpena it's gonna have like the multi-spoke alpena wheels that can be had in a brilliant blue i don't know the whole black and white only mercedes thing also it shows swirl marks very badly right don't start because this paint is not in the best shape no this one's awful if you even look at it with a cloth it gets swirl marks it's awful the side profiles i do want to say this one is a little bit more suv like bmw has like we're all peanut no i've been doing it sloped the back a little bit but they've been sporty and mercedes have embraced it right the escalade we said looks like a block of apartments because it just uses every square inch it's an entire footprint it's a cube yeah all right i i'm really curious about the alpena interior but let's just run through the gls because it is otherwise very similar to the gle why can't you stop looking at the concepts why should they make hair stop here let's just look at the interior okay oh is it soft i'm not even gonna mention soft clothes i didn't do it either the first time i joined the dark side okay speaking of dark side this is quite a dark speck for the interior yeah this comes in like lighter tones comes in some fun stuff um i do you know i really like what's going on here we have said that oh you mean the gle interior yeah it's not that different to the gle in fact this car isn't that different it's the same interior but the gle is quite a nice interior it is great it's true yeah and you know what did you say recently though the open pore wood is the new style it's the new one this actually looks nice like it looks modern yeah in terms of in terms of uh gloss woods this is better than what you know like the lexus trend in the 2000s when everything was just bright red it was like orange yeah yeah that doesn't work this works no this looks good um we got you know everything's very familiar this is the amg steering wheel yep quite busy but actually wonderful the two screens we've got a huge sunroof back here yeah the grab handles yeah yeah easy to use infotainment this has got hey mercedes but i don't want sex it's going to do stupid stuff oh we didn't do it it doesn't listen have you sat in the back back seats no i haven't but then i did and after fiddling with some seat mechanisms and making it look harder than it actually is i found them to be perfectly adequate for a five foot ten and a quarter sized adult we don't know yet that was that's after that what you just saw cabins are this is tennis the car um but yeah no it's it's very nice in here it's it's just uh oh this has the burmester extra surround thing is it good it's expensive but it's very good where's my spin out tweeters we oh yeah where are they are you sure it's got the full on high it does it does have look look up here it's got these tweeters oh yeah yeah interesting it's very nice the seats are quite firm the driving position is quite high i don't know it feels it feels becoming becoming of a luxury fast suv yeah no it fits the bill i just wish and i said this in the gls review that we did previously i wish this had the s-class interior whether it's the previous gen s class or the new gen s class i think for it being the s-class of suvs and mercedes's own words it should have the s-class interior oh don't push on the dashboard it's not bad for mercedes that's not bad i mean the whole dash is physically moving but yeah yeah but if we yeah show me the alpena okay oh one of us remembered at least i did it that's good you did it all right an x7 interior yeah it is alpena's sorry our peanuts this is alpina alpina's version alpena's version interior yes sorry it looks very similar oh there's an alpena badge there there's an elpina badge there there's an alpena badge on my on my crystal swarovski that's nice lifter thing because that's otherwise that's blank yeah yeah no it's it's cool it has the alpena logo which is also on the steering wheel this is such a happy badge because when you see that it's special and it's rare what what is it what do tell us about the badge tell us okay well the badge as i mentioned before is a a weber carburetor and a crankshaft because that's what the uh that's the guy who started alpena he was tuning those things for bmws in the 60s yes now check out this do you notice anything different about the steering wheel james yeah it feels different it feels different and this leather here is different this is called lavalina leather lavalina lavalina leather isn't that the the scotch that uh he drinks in parks and rec it's lagovalin yeah this isn't delicious and smoky but it is very smooth okay okay this is a high it's one of the nicest leathers in the world according to them according to them yes rolls-royce um has something to say about that but i i will say it's nice and it's a different also alpena gage cluster so this this bugs me and it doesn't bug me from all the same things it's like a normal gauge alpena in it yeah no okay so they change the font and the color of the programming the problem is is that back in the day it was cool because when you got an alpena they removed the gauge cluster and they actually changed it to blue dials like physically because they were from like this is the modern version of that well no somebody went click click click click blue some software engineer yeah it's gone from years of school and highlights okay yeah has made that made it blue and then changed the font i will say they made it bmw's normal gauge cluster is red on red on red this is it's easiest easier to read yeah yeah um the rest of this this wood is nice very clean in here very nicely done very solid bmw knows how to uh build interiors right now they're going with the opening like on here this is rare nowadays to be able to push on a steering wheel and have there be almost no noise or creaks this this wood looks like a a 3d printed thing have you ever seen like a 3d printed model yeah you're right it has that kind of like which is not i don't know if that's a compliment yeah it just looks a bit 3d printed i'm not going to say much about the infotainment um because i've complained at length before about this but i will say i'm going to give you 30 seconds to find out how to adjust the eq on this car ready yep and go okay all right so we've got media we've got com we've got nav why don't we go media no uh yep no no okay uh what's out of that menu um i'm not feeling that i'm not feeling that um get me back hang on oh oh option options yeah that'll get you there configure it no i don't want that um home yeah oh you're back where you started okay uh apps it's gonna be an app it's gonna be an app um at what point do i get to say i rest my case fire oh you click on the audio that'll do it oh that muted mute yeah you know what where's oh what's that there you go that'll do it except it won't how well adjusting the eq how is this acceptable okay that has how is this accepted you know great this has got bowers and wilkins which is a great stereo but i can't adjust it because i can't find it's in here and i found it and you know what i've found it three times if you ask me right now to find it wouldn't be able to take a labyrinth you have to have your i don't remember where it is hold your right hand to this hedge and that's how you get to the end i rest my case okay it's pointlessly complicated and i hate it um have you seen the seats the back row yeah so then i took a look at the back row after struggling with powered seat logic that makes the seats and james's car look as simple as operating a light switch i too deduced that they were quite comfortable for a full-size adult again the tentative car reviews okay so oh by the way the captain's seats are awesome and the ambient lighting in here is cool mercedes still wins underneath lighting yeah do you prefer this interior um i think they're not that far off they're not that far off two screens nice steering wheel fine i do you have a uh these seats are french stitch seats are softer they are softer yes i do find they're a little bit narrow very adjustable though and they're massaging do you have a french stitch on your on your thing you do i checked you don't don't even try i probably do you probably don't probably do french stitching or not the amg is more alive more frantic more of a brute sharp as it is loud anyone looking for a mercedes amg experience will find themselves right at home with the gls 63 however it was the alpena that won us both over this day with its perfectly tuned balance of performance and comfort it's one of the few super suvs on sale that seems to sacrifice nothing as ridiculous as it looks and even though sadly alpena didn't rework any of bmw's interior issues i genuinely loved living with it and it makes me wish we had access to more of the alpena products over here in north america not just the big stuff thomas did i ever tell you that my dad had an alpena really yeah my dad was cool look he had a blue e46 b3 cabrio and look there's my little brother standing next to it wow that's awesome wait james don't you only have one brother and he's he's older than you thomas you fool look at the photo how can that person possibly be older than me that is clearly a child i hate you i know okay this was your your brainy idea yeah you have to try i'm not no you have to try it seriously you get to name it if you try it you get to name that smoothie oh okay x5m competition it is thick yeah oh my god how did you do that many takes of that lunatic commitment you

Channel: Throttle House

Views: 1,083,847

Keywords: Mercedes-benz, Mercedes-AMG, AMG vs Alpina, BMW Alpina, Alpina, BMW vs Mercedes, GLS63, GLS63S, GLS SUV review, GLS vs Alpina, Alpina SUV review, Alpina vs AMG, XB7, XB7 vs GLS63, ALPINA 0-60, XB7 0-60, AMG 0-60, GLS63 0-60, GLS63 vs X7, X7 vs XB7, Mercedes-AMG GLS63, BMW Alpina XB7, Alpina XB7 Horsepower, GLS63 Horsepower, Alpina XB7 interior, GLS63 Interior, GLS63 vs RSQ8, AMG drag race, AMG Drifting, Alpina Drag Race, BMW Alpina Review, X7 reliability, X7 vs X5

Id: Z-60GXn2FT4

Length: 23min 56sec (1436 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 17 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Uptons_BJs]

You know how sometimes Cadillac's product planning makes absolutely no sense? That's another example here - Why isn't there an Escalade V with the Supercharged engine out of the CT5-V yet?

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Mercedes proves that the market is there for a high performance SUV. Yet for two decades, Cadillac hasn't muscled up their most prestigious and best regarded product.

[u/yatlvcar]

That blender scene was perfect, funny and completely understandable.

[u/ApatheticFinsFan]

The X7 looks kinda funny because it’s so narrow. Not sure why BMW made it so narrow since it’s even narrower than the X5.

[u/V8-Turbo-Hybrid]

That is same logical between S63 AMG and Alpina B7

[u/topcat5]

Stunning vehicles, the both of them. But the pricing.
You can get a G63 for this kind of cash.

[u/abarthsimpson]

I really enjoy these guys.

[u/[deleted]]

that bmw is extremely ugly

[u/reREptiLE]

I mean it's fun and all, but shouldn't Alpina be compared to a BRABUS!?

[u/RealKevinJames]

The noise out of the alpina is intoxicating