Top Car

26 TOPCAR.CO.ZA|January 2016

FIRST DRIVES.

Keep the accelerator pinned for morethan a

few seconds and you’ll be travelling at ‘just

lock me up officer’ speed. Zero to 100kph is a

3.9-second, speech-slurring, vision-blurring

reality. There are faster carsaround, but not

so many at this price. With 700Nm of

always-on torque at the ready, stamping on

the gas ge ts the rear end thrashing ab out

like a GreatWhite shark in a feeding frenzy.

Sorry, but painted in matte grey, the analogy

seems apt. Want more? Engage Race mode

for maximum crazy as the ESP switches

automatically to sport handling mode. It’ll

still tame the most injudicious combination

of steering and throttle inputs but not before

you’ve left skid marks or left skid marks, if

you catch my drift. Around the tricky

26-corner Ascari circuit near Ronda in

Spain, the C63 S proved that in the right

hands it’ll just about ke ep up with a properly

driven AMG GT S. You do feel the mass, but

the nose is less affecte d by it than you’d

think, turning in with alacrity and handling

the track’s two chicanes like a former

Olympic slalom skier after a few gluhweins

• tidy, if not outright competition ready. The
  only time the V8’s weight comes into play is
  under hard braking when the rear end ge ts
  light and twitchy.
  The C63 S is a mad, addictive

amphetamine. But dial it back to Comfort

and you may as well have poppeda Xanax

and gone driving in your mum’s C200. Yes, it

can cruise along a coastal ro ad, cross a

continent or drop the kids off at sc hool in

convincing serenity, its weapons of war

hidden beneath a thick comforter.

Merc-AMG may have gone a little bonkers

lately, but the C63 S can still do the old-school

Mercedes-Benz thing. What it cannot dois

look as tame as one. This time around

AMG’s style-mongers battled hard for more

differentiation, and won. So the C63 Coupe

looks much morepurposeful even than the

sportiest C-Class sedan, especially at the rear

where flared wheel arches and wider tyres

star alongside a bootlid spoiler extension,

striking ta il-lights and a moreboldly sculpted

quad exhaust and diffuser arrangement. Get

one in stealth paint, both carbon fibre exterior

packages and black 19s for max shock factor

at the golf club. Or better still, grab a

(limited) Edition 1 model in designo magno

selenite grey matte

paint, 19- and 20-inch

mixed-si ze black alloys

edged in an eye-searing

yellow (yes, yellow) hue

with matching yellow

calipers and stripes that

race along the bonnet,

over the ro of and onto

the bootlid. Seriously,

you’d need to gofull

Liberty Walk to make it

look any wilder.tc

HIGHS

Stunninglooks,

searing speed,

prodigiousgrip

LOWS

Waiting until March

todrive it again

VERDICT

From docile to

explosive and 48

stagesin between