COMPARISON
to be happy with the 1,200 or so AMG
wagons Mercedes sells a year (special-
order only, mind you) and that’s that.
Still, there have been moments of fore-
shadowing. My mind wanders back to the
2010 New York International Auto Show.
I was at Cadillac’s party when the wraps
came off the CTS-V wagon. I turned to a
Cadillac marketing person I was chummy
with at the time and asked, “How can a
barely post-bankruptcy General Motors
be selling a 556-hp station wagon with
a manual transmission?” He shoved his
highball glass in my face and answered,
“Because [Bob] Lutz wants some guaran-
teed good press out of you bastards.”
So yes, having three mega-wagons
available to well-heeled American
enthusiasts is most likely the crown
jewel in this, the actual golden age of the
automobile. It’s all downhill from here,
because it has to be. As for these three,
they’re all incredible. Logistics wound
up dictating that I used the third-place
Audi RS 6 for a road trip with my family to
Palm Springs, and the entire time I kept
asking myself, “How can this magnificent
beast be third place at anything?”
Gorgeous, elegant, comfortable, bullet-
train fast, and did I mention gorgeous?
The “loss” just shows how mighty the
competition is.
Which brings up the second-place
Mercedes-AMG E 63 S wagon. First off,
it kills me when a derivative of a vehicle
just awarded Car of the Year loses a
comparison test. Literally, I hate it. Makes
us look inconsistent in our judgment,
we’re well aware. But because of price,
we tend to lump Porsche Panameras in
with the S-Class, not the E-Class, so if you
ask a MotorTrender what’s best in the 5
Series/A6/E-Class segment, we can legit
say the Mercedes.Moreover, had this E 63 S gone up
against the pre-face-lift Panamera Turbo,
the one that “only” made 550 horsepower,
I think the AMG would have won. Again,
it’s not like there’s anything bad about the
way the Hammer Wagon performs, and
if you drive it like Mercedes just dropped
one off at your house (guilty!), the E 63 S
wagon can indeed keep up with the Turbo
S Sport Turismo on a fast-moving canyon
road, if only just.Things don’t get more surefire than a silver
Porsche with a red leather interior.