TOM MORNINGSTAR: This is
a Mercedes E-Class. And if you saw it on the street,
you wouldn't give it a second look. Sure, in other places in the
world, AMG marks aren't something you see every single
day, but here in the land of cheap gas and low taxes,
they are just how people get to work. Because community is just the
sort of task that requires eight cylinders and
two turbos. Everyone knows these cars are
quick out of the box. But if you saw this E63 on the
street, would you believe it makes as much horsepower as
two Mustang GTs, three BMW 328s or Ford base model E250s? A Corvette ZR1, under perfect
conditions, can do 180 in the standing mile. A Porsche Turbo S will
run about 185. This car, with seating
for five and a big trunk, can do over 190. [CAR ENGINE] MATT FARAH: When you think
about driving in Southern California, you're not thinking
about Orange County. You're thinking about Malibu. You're thinking about
the Canyons. You're thinking about where
car culture happens. Orange County is terrible. The best you can hope for is
one of the toll roads. And I am prepared for that. The toll roads-- because
everyone in Southern California is very cheap-- are always empty. And I'm driving the
Weistec E63. A Weistec says this car makes
715 horsepower at the wheels, which is quite a bit more
than the Renntech CLS we drove last season. And if that's true, some simple
math will tell you that with a 15% drivetrain loss,
that's nearly 850 horsepower at the crank. And all that, of course, is in
a five-seat saloon car with massage seats and with
all kinds of good, comfortable things. The E-Class is an
interesting car. It's really the bread and
butter of Mercedes. In some of the wealthier areas
in the States, the E-Class is the bestselling car period. Where I'm from, in Greenwich,
Connecticut, happens to be one of those places. And it has to be a little bit
of everything for everybody. It has to be a somewhat frugal
economy car, such as the diesel one I was able to drive
from Mexico to Oregon on a single tank of fuel. And then it has to be kind of
kind of bonkers like this Twin Turbo V8 AMG model, which comes
from the factory with either 516 or 557 horsepower,
depending on how you get it. So let's turn onto the toll
road, and let's see what's 715 at the wheels feels like. I'm sure you guys would rather
me drive with the windows up, so you can hear me better. But that's not an option,
because as soon as we pulled away from Weistec shop, the
air conditioning stopped working, which is exactly what
you want in a $100,000 plus luxury sedan. Additionally, something has
happened with the steering wheel and the shifter
paddles don't work. Because Mercedes doesn't let
you shift manually with the lever anymore, that means I
don't have manual mode, which is exactly what I want. Here we go, coming in. [CAR ENGINE REVVING] MATT FARAH: Whoa. No burn-out, but
ohhh, there's-- OK. [LAUGHS] The giggle-meter, however, is
working just fine, perfectly calibrated. And this thing is making
every bit of 715 horsepower at the wheels. -So this car has our
complete package. It's got our inner cooler
system, which consists of a heat exchange in the front
that you can see here. It's got a trunk ice tank
in the back of the car that you don't see. You can fill it with ice
if you're going to the track, for example. It's got a complete exhaust
system which consists of true down pipes and a complete
mid-pipe that connects to the cat-back system. It's got our turbo upgrade which
consists of a billet five-axis machine impeller,
revised internals. And one of the cool things about
this turbo kit is that it's a complete bolt-on. There's no hoses you have to add
on or nothing like that. So there's no drama with it. At Weistec, we produce packages
for all the N156 models of the platforms that
carry that engine, so the C63, S, SL, CL, CLS, MLR, SLS,
so on and so forth. We also have the N157 package
that we produced parts for the E63, the CLS 63, ML and G. From
there, we're now starting to do the 55, there's
the N113 motor. MATT FARAH: Watching that
speedometer, there's no live. I just went from 0 to 12
miles an hour at an incredible rate of speed. Absolutely incredible
rate of speed. And, of course, because
this car is so smart. It's displaying a
cup of coffee. It thinks I'm tired, but that's
because I'm wearing Dillon Optics sunglasses. I actually just drank
a five-hour energy. Let's mat it again, and see
how it feels from a roll. Here we go. [CAR ENGINE REVVING] MATT FARAH: Oh, there's
six miles an hour, eight miles an hour. There's nine miles an hour,
ten miles an hour, eleven. 12 miles an hour. That was 14 miles an hour. Unbelievable pace
for this E63. Seatbelt tensioners work good. I'm not going to lie. The E63 doesn't really make
a great track car. The tranny on downshifts, and
obviously I'm in Auto here. But the other ones
I've used and downshifts aren't the best. But they do make great
standing mile cars. Amd I'll tell you why. Huge horsepower, limited slip
dip, really quick upshifts, actually, especially with
Weistec software. And the E-Class actually has
one of the lowest drag coefficients of any car
on the market today. It's only 0.26. That's part of the reason I was
able to go 800 miles in the diesel one, part of the
reason it makes a great standing mile drag car. High-speed acceleration, crazy
in cars like this. -We like modifying a big V8. That's kind of comparing it to
an LS motor, for example. A 6.2, for example, is making
500 wheel NA bolt-ons. You can't even get out of
a seven-liter GM motor. It's quite amazing, actually. So that's kind of one of the
reasons why we love that motor, and we started
working on it. One of the things with these
cars is that if you're driving factor stock, or if you're
driving tuned, you notice they run out up top. That's one of the
characteristics of its engine because the turbos are just
so small, kind of chokes up up top. This car pulls all the way to
red line, and even with four people in the car, you're going
to feel your spine just kind of crushed in the back
seat, because it's running at so much torque. This car puts down 715
on pumped gas. It's 91 octane in California. And it's put down almost
800 foot-pound of torque at the wheels. But if you turn the traction
wheel off or put it on sport, this thing makes so much torque,
that it just starts getting sideways for a second. Sometimes even third. [CAR ENGINE REVVING] MATT FARAH: Now, if you want
to go drag racing, this particular car has something
before that. When I used to race Mustangs
back in the day, we used to have a cooler full of ice. And in between runs, we've
cycled the engine coolant through that cooler. They actually have a built-in
ice tank in the trunk. So if you want to drag racing,
you can just be filling that up in between runs. And of course, that parallel
is not by accident. These guys started by building
Mustangs back in the day. They might not want me to tell
you that, but there's no shame in raising Mustangs. The thing about these cars is
the speed is just effortless. If my girlfriend wanted to go to
the store, I would have no problem giving her
the keys to this. Because as long as you keep
your foot out of it, it's intentional speed. It's not crazy, accidental
speed. You're not going to get in this
car and go oh my god, I lost it and went into
a telephone pole. You have to try. You have to tell you
want to go faster. And if you don't, it's just
like any other car. It's really docile. When you drive a C63, for
example, you just feel how tight the car is, how well
it corners, I mean, for such a big car. A 7000 RPM revving V8, seven
speed transmission. These are things to us
that were just-- we just saw a big opportunity to
make something really nice out of it, that the market
just didn't have. I mean, then you start getting
into the SLSs, for example, and it's got a better
transmission. It's a lightweight car. And they just work great with
that supercharger system. And again it was just
no one can do it. So it's something
we stepped into. MATT FARAH: So what have
we learned here? The 700 horsepower Renntech
car that we drove was very fast, did rolling burn-outs,
and yet, things worked a little better than this. Now I really like the guys at
Weistec, and I genuinely-- the air conditioning,
all that-- I don't think that's
their fault. I really don't. So don't get too mad at them. I'm mad, because it's 97 degrees
outside, and I have no air conditioning. But I'm not mad at
them for it. It's just something that happens
when you're turning. Is $16,000 for this much
horsepower an amazing value when modifying E63? Absolutely. I mean, you're talking an extra
almost 300 horsepower for 16 grand. That is nuts. TOM MORNINGSTAR: When we
return to Weistec, an examination of the codes
revealed a bad CAN-bus sensor, a common problem for this
generation of E-Class and nothing to do with Weistec's
tuning of the car. Yes, it was 100 degrees that
day, and it's easy to blame Weistec for a car that
isn't functioning perfectly all the time. But these are very complex
vehicles with thousands of small parts that can fail. Besides you can't stay mad at
a broken air conditioner for too long when you're out on
the highway doing this. [CAR ENGINE REVVING]
It is not like a normal AMG is underpowered but thats just MORE awesome.
I don't like it as much as the S63, or especially the S65 - but this car is easily one of the best vehicles on the road.
I cannot imagine it with 30-40% more power.