AMG makes a Mercedes-Benz E-class for the racing family man

Say you need a practical, roomy luxury sedan to use as a family car or for hauling business associates to big lunch meetings. But when no one’s in the car with you, or when those present appreciate a nicely sliced apex as much as you do, you would really like something that can rise to the occasion. You have what we call a conundrum.

May we suggest the new E 63 AMG luxury performance sedan, coming to the United States in October.

“It behaves like the calm Dr. Jekyll or the hot-blooded Mr. Hyde,” said Volker Morhinweg, AMG’s CEO.

This split personality is made possible by three new features: a mighty 6.2-liter engine, the multiclutch, seven-speed transmission and a three-mode electronically controlled suspension.

The suspension, stiffened up to begin with over the stock E-class, can be cranked up to three different settings: comfort, sport or sport plus. Twisting the console-mounted knob varies the flow of fluid through the shocks that control the three-link front coil springs and multilink, air-spring rear. The ECU uses 11 sensors to determine speed, roll, lateral acceleration and driving style, then adjusts the stiffness of the shocks accordingly with what AMG calls, appropriately, “lightning speed.” Combined with speed-sensitive rack-and-pinion steering and a 26 percent faster 14:1 steering ratio, and the car could easily come alive in your hands.

We found the comfort setting just right for soaking up road whallops while approaching the car’s 155-mph electronically limited terminal velocity on the autobahn, as well as for just driving around town. Topping 100 mph in sport or sport plus was too harsh. For winding Schwabian forest roads, we twisted it all the way around to sport plus and immediately felt the decrease in roll as well as greatly increased feedback through the wheel and the seat.

In power and power delivery, the car is certainly in league with the competition. The E 63 gets AMG’s naturally aspirated 6.2-liter V8 (the “63” in the name is only a model number, says AMG, it does not refer to displacement, which is 6.2; maybe they thought no one would notice). The engine peaks at 518 hp at 6,800 rpm and doesn’t redline until 7,200 rpm, a 900-rev increase over the E 55. But being naturally aspirated, it is far from peaky. To quote AMG, it has “powerful power delivery.” It pulls as strongly as any naturally aspirated V8 we’ve ever pulled on, and its exhaust note can only be described as “sonorous.”

While AMG lists 0-62 mph at 4.4 seconds, two-tenths quicker than the supercharged E 55 it replaces, it is during autobahn passing that the E 63 feels strongest, launching with a roar as it pulls into the passing lane and slowing down only when we ran out of room or will.

source: autoweek