Chris Harris on Cars | Mercedes C63 AMG Bi-Turbo Road & Track test.

hello and welcome to the new twin-turbocharged mercedes-benz c63 AMG hello peeps so this is the new c63 AMG and this is an important car for the people in a falda back because this is the successor to the most successful car they've ever made they made more than 40 thousand of the last one because it was a cult what have we got there well we've got a twin turbocharged engine controversial we'll come to that in a minute we've got wider tracks we've got 510 horsepower in this s model there are now two models there's four hundred and sixty-seven in the normal car most markets get both places like Australia only get the S which is fair enough really first impressions what a lovely road car this is the S model it comes with adaptive dampers 3-way adaptive dampers and a fully electronic differential which can kind of behave like the M variable diff in an m3 so we can stay pretty much fully open or it can lock up I think I'm at you but I think from the outside it's quite a conservative looking vehicle particularly after the m3 which has got the big wide arches at the back the body and white alterations are less here we've got wider front wings but the rear is pretty much the same we've got the four tailpipes but they're fakes this time with proper little peashooters behind them the strange thing is when you get in it and try it yeah you get my gist this thing is an animal sixteen hundred and fifty kilograms effectively it's not that heavy it's got mass amount of power and it's vast amounts of torque and it's really really fast it's more of a muscle car than the m3 even steering is lovely on the road chassis is nicely balanced of a three-way dampers I always leave it in comfort and I just keep it there we haven't got a dual clutch gearbox in this one so this is quite interesting this is code m1 7-7 the engine as you'll find out later on and you'll see in the cutaways this works with the old wet clutch automatic or dr. automatic gearbox that Mercedes has had for seven or eight years now and I think it's a nice package ouch it's a nice powertrain package the shifts on the paddles are not quite as quick as a DCT but they're near is damnit and the shifts are smooth and if you leave it in automatic mode at low speed it's nice and progressive and it's a very good but it's pretty frugal to the claimed figures yeah this thing is pretty mighty I have to admit and its so flippin fast now at this point you're probably a bit bored and according to YouTube when we look at the numbers we need to put some oversteer in so we're going to go to the track later on so nil stick an oversteer slide in now to keep the punters happy now now people are inevitably going to make comparisons between this car and the obvious BMW the BMW is coming for a load of stick for its motor not the way it drives but more specifically the way it sounds and the lack of emotion AMG have pulled a blinder I'm afraid if you want a car a small saloon or estate hunt with a really characterful motor then the system I don't feeling lose an awful lot over the old m156 6.2 litre v8 in some respects this makes an even sweeter noise it pops and it bangs and if you leave it in the loud exhaust note with this optional three-way flapped exhaust it's pretty crazy it's a lovely sound they've worked very hard on that and they've had a complete result I suspect it could swing it for some people but it's a different car in personality the m3 is a bit more taut this is a bit more relaxed a bit more of a muscle car I suppose it's the classic n vs. AMG dichotomy and I don't think that's a bad thing there's slightly different cars I think it's probably a little less exciting ultimately but when you get it wound up and it's sitting on a differential coming out of turns wow it feels mega it really does know four-wheel drive so on a slightly damp surface early today with the three-way traction control set to the middle setting when it was kind of leaving a bit of slip it was really really exciting it's a great cruiser to part throttle it's nice and refined wind noise is pretty well suppressed these front seats are superb I have to say the shells good you do sit a little bit too high but only it's a couple of MIL mate I'd like to get right on the ground but as a package this thing is a weapon how do you feel about the look of it from the outside I'm interested because I think the last c63 was a design icon I just think it was a great looking small muscle car and I'm not convinced that this one is quite and well resolved because I think that sort of scooped flame surfacing doesn't lend itself as well to adding width but we've driven it on the road I've told you how I feel about it initial impressions let's go somewhere a little more controlled and see what it's like when you use all of the performance but before we head out onto the track and destroy some tyres sorry I mean fully explore the CCT threes dynamics let's have a good route around the outers and the inners welcome to the cabin of the new c63 AMG I thought we'd have a look round here to divert us from the obvious sideways stuff there's either happened or about to happen depending on the Edit and we will talk you to other bits and bobs this cabin is controversial it's a normal c-class cabin and people don't like this big thing that looks like an iPad that stuck on the dashboard I do because I'm obviously aesthetically challenged visual trick quite clever the center console is very wide in this car it's not carbon it's a sort of basic piano black effect and that gives the impression of it being wider inside here than it perhaps is it still a spacious car though steering wheel pretty conventional AMG just a light redesign all these buttons a little bit different here I don't like them as much they're a little bit sort of Korean in feel all this stuff is very high-quality though and we'll get down to the cover buttons down here that mark this out as an AMG the dashboard will have a fiddle through and again with Neil is great because it's got this AMG function so you can basically go click on your AMG and then you've got all the toys to play with and of course being turbocharged it's got a boost gauge who doesn't like boost gauges this one sort flicks up and down and then when you're in manual mode in the gearbox it's got some shift lights and it's got all sorts of things going on and you've got temperatures for engine oil you've got transmission temperatures there's lots of information most of it is really useful some of its just titillation for geeks like you and me which I like now the dynamic thing down here is quite interesting if we press that button you get offered all sorts of different things okay you can see here that we've got on the dashboard we can either have Comfort Sport Sport+ or race and there's a mode called individual where you can have your obvious you know your own configuration that you can save it and come back to it as you want it and most importantly you can have every configuration of whatever you want saved in the individual setting so you can have a very comfortable chassis with the dampers in full soft but you can have an aggressive sounding engine and aggressive gearshift if you want so that sort of almost infinite adjustability is really really cool I have to say I think it's a really pleasant environment the seat is a good shape the driving position is good both myself and Neil felt we were sitting a little bit too high I think that's the same as the m3 I've always feel am a bit too high in an m3 this one time just half an inch should be nicer to be lower in the seat but it's a high-quality cabin it's a very very special place to sit but what you now want to know is that this is the S model and under there there's 510 horsepowers worth of turbocharged v8 so it's gonna have a look at that now here it is the new Mercedes masterpiece you've seen it already in the GT coupe it's exactly the same engine internally but this time with wet sump lubrication twin turbo v8 it's just wedged in there so let's go and have a closer look at one that's been removed from the car so Blue Peter style here's one we made earlier this one that's been popped out of the engine bay this is the m1 7-7 Biturbo v8 that replaces the 156 the glorious 6.2 liter that we've loved for evermore it's a really clever piece of packaging essentially you've got two turbochargers that sit in the V of the v8 and then that means that it's cleverly packaged it's not a big thing at all in fact pound for pound it's a similar weight to the old and one five six because you lose a bit in terms of the block because it's more than need to be a substantial but obviously you gained weight for the turbocharges the key thing here is heat management of the motor just in a stationary state that's fine you can manage that and when it's got air flowing over it at speed not a problem the difficult thing here with the turbochargers as they are it's hot running fast running them coming to a stationary stop so imagine doing 250 clicks on the Autobahn and then stopping at a junction you got all that heat well the way they've dealt with that if they've got a bonnet nostril it comes underneath the underside of the bonnet and direct call they're right onto those turbochargers when they're hot here's all your intercooler so this is basically managing the intake temperature to keep that nice and low for all the power the difference here and the reason this is called m1 77 and the GTS engine is called one seven eight this is wet sump whereas the GT is dry sump to get it lower underneath that load Bonnie you don't need the dry sump in the in the saloon car in the estate car anything else of note well this one shows where the dynamic engine mounts are these are options so they're that oil that you pass a current through and they can alter the viscosity of the oil and then change the damping frequency that really does make a difference in this car Mercedes reckons that with those engine mounts everything feels more stable around it there's a lovely touch over here come and see this you like this right m1 77 so this is the new engine this is the Biturbo v8 you can see how much some all of the displacement is because this here is the lovely old m156 look at the size of those things there okay let me show you now piston from the old 6.2 v8 piston from the new one look at that hugely different are they interesting here a couple things to note for reasons of mvh the chain is actually in the blocks that a casting comes across and the chain runs inside it apparently that makes it even smoother but it's a massively strong structure this is built to withstand 130 bar of pressure which is kind of outside the normal tolerances of a gasoline engine it's getting on towards diesel pressures so what does that tell us that tells us that Marcedes means business with its engine mg going to do more I asked them how much power it could produce and I kept saying almost 650 700 and they just creamed but I think we might be seeing it in a racing car application sometime very soon maybe even at Geneva another thing that's very important about this motor for AMG is noise so let's go and have a look at how it makes its noise noise was obviously very important to all of those AMG customers anyone that's lived with an AMG v8 knows that that that v8 stand is really important BMW obviously played some clever tricks with their inline 6 to try and make it sound good not all that well received by its punters this car sounds great the reasons are quite simple ok up here you've got a link tube got a link tube here with a valve in it or as I say a flap so there are three flaps in this exhaust system that can control the quality of the noise in the old 6.2 engine you didn't have a link pipe here but they worked out for it in computer modelling that actually linking here could cause some interesting effects so effectively what they'll do is they'll open and close this for the quality of noise and you've got two flaps back here as well okay so you've got a noisy route and a quite route have a look at this okay you got an actuator here you can see it's opened up this bigger pipe here gives you some more noise this one gives you less noise and interestingly all of it has been acoustically tested for example there are little flats in this pipe here and they worked out that if you have nine slats you've got a certain quality of noise but if you had seven you've got a different quality of noise so they've really tuned it like I sort of yeah like something from the the the brass section in an orchestra and they've ended up with some really clever noise so you don't really feel short-changed at all over the old 6.2 yeah it's very clever so this is the rear axle assembly of the new c63 its new it doesn't carry anything over really from the standard c-class you can see great big arms it's very very big and substantial the thing you need to know is this big box of tricks here okay in the standard c63 you have a normal mechanical differential locking differential that's key there's no open differential available on the CC me now that they did their research and they reckon for the dynamics you need to have a locking diff so yeah the one time smokey is gone I like that because I didn't really like the old car with the open diff in the normal car you get a mechanical one in the S model you get this thing here this is the fancy electronic one which is really really clever it's just an electrical actuation but it's constantly variable and it's really strong made by directs that we first saw this in the SLS Black Series this is the development of that so it's better and cleverer it means that in a braking zone the differential can free up and almost completely so you've got it nice and open that gives you the ability to turn the car and then when you get on the power obviously the thing starts to lock up to give you that traction and of course it a lot completely to allow you to do big slides like this Neil show them a slide now to show them have it yeah you better turn okay um let's wonder when having at the front not a vast amount to look at here I mean again all new so bigger stronger sexier arms massive optional carbon ceramic if you want them the key thing here is the electric power steering okay this has been completely revised over the standard c-class for obvious reasons to make the thing feel more direct I mean they're trying really hard aren't they all these manufactures with electric steering for me still doesn't quite give you what you get in the hydraulic steering and of course the GT coupe a has hydraulic steering was this car has to have the electrical stuff again it's just big big lovely bits of metal a bespoke and special for the c63 check me out in my new c63s and I like these cars they're really exciting sorry about the whole munchkin face with the lid on they are being quite safety conscious given the way we're driving the cars I can sort of see why this thing is the beasty this is one of those delicious machines that looks relatively ordinary from the exterior and is an animal underneath so we don't have that much time usual show let's do some straight laps and explain the based on timing to the car and then maybe we'll let it move around a bit and let the YouTube commenter say that it's totally irrelevant the way he drifts I know it's irrelevant but I just like doing it alright God so this thing's all about talk quite different in feel to an m3 I'm in fourth gear coming up a hill now I know a months ago I was down here in an m3 and I was in 3rd there so we actually need to use a gear higher because there's so much talk steering is quite light not much life going on there at all but then you get on the gas and these GS feels so active at the back axle this has got the slippery dip in it this one the car has a really nice fundamental balance obviously it understeers it has to understeer a bit from you know the normal people you'll find on the road that you'll have your traction control light flashing the whole time I've got the systems off here in the in between sport ESP mode or you know traction stability mode it's quite nice you can just lean on and it's nice and progressive I think they've calibrated that nicely likewise the brakes you've got so many modes to roll through we'll go through those just at the peak but you've got almost in that adjustment of dampers of power train of gearbox this is mercs non dual clutch MTC it's the wet clutch gearbox but it's been taken to a new level and I have to say I really like it it's not quite as fast as the best es G's but you know it's not far off and it suits the personality of the car I'm going somewhere here with this on time yes this is a proper AMG this feels a little bit muscle carry this one if the m3 is a bit more taut and a bit more I want to go really really fast everywhere around the corners and this is probably back a few percent and it's personality that I really like ah so down this main straight talk just hauling us along is really impressive turn some of this stuff off to happens breaking down this first corner in Portimao so we'll be a bit sensible through that one because I suppose one should look at that it's already wanting to just be just back it in like that it's just a lot to be had this is interesting this is talk for you I'm down at no miles an hour third gear look at that third gear it's pretty outrageous isn't it pretty outrageous um I don't think people are going to be moan the loss of the of the 6.2 v8 I just think this is an animal this thing is a complete you can do all of this stuff and wear AMG have been really clever as I think they've replicated the personality of their big normally aspirated v8 with their turbocharged motor in a way that BMW probably struggled to do so again look what happens when you get on the gas it's just progressive it's very easy and it's gonna keep pulling this motors well just as in the GT let's do a big fast one for a lot of fourth gear yes you've got a quite a talk to do that what I think back is I would say that the Michelin on the back copes very well part it um it's up against it the initial torque reaction of the rear tires is such that you find yourself thinking more economy they need to have a much bigger rear tire on this thing that's just rude isn't it that is just rude god this is the long one we're doing this too much the moment ah me okay I'll pick my nose pick my nose and now the fast one down the hill yeah okay we can maybe have a little go with that one coming that's quite fast this is a more talented car than the one it replaces it's faster handles better and uses a lot less fuel actually that's worth mentioning but the claimed 33 mpg on the combined cycle the car now has some decent range despite having to keep the standard 66 litre tank to my eyes it wears it's muscle looking to subtly but the way Mercedes has kept the v8 character and throttle response it keeps pulling all the way to 7000 rpm it's pretty special is it better than an m3 but I'll need the same place same time test to say for sure but I can say that they're quite different personalities and it might just be that more people are won over by the c63 is fantastically characterful motive you

Channel: Chris Harris on Cars

Views: 1,230,082

Keywords: mercedes, amg, c63 amg, c63s, m177, m156, bmw, m3, Mercedes-Benz C 63 AMG, Automobile (TV Genre), Twin-turbo, road test, track test, review, how to, chris harris, chris harris on cars, audi rs4

Id: n4XUTu2lzTo

Length: 20min 57sec (1257 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 23 2015