You feel it in your heart. No, it’s your gut — that’s where you feel it first. Slaloming up and down the banks of the Sierra del Nieves in Mercedes-AMG’s new C63 S Coupé, you’re overcome by an avalanche of sensory overload. There’s the supreme power of the twice-turbocharged 4.0-liter V8 pulling you like a tractor through the short straights, the gut-punchingRRRRaaAaaaawWWwr! ripping from the quad-exhaust tips behind you. There’s the precise balance of this two-door beast, slicing through the Spanish hills with surprising exactitude for its heft.
"Goddamn this is fun!" my driving partner Mike shouts over the din, barely having time to look over between corners, his smile reaching from one end of his Aviators to the other.
We’re eating Renault Clios and Peugeot 107s like tapas. Plucking them from the black asphalt like plump olives from the infinite orchards around us, and devouring them with glee. This C63 S is a sublime machine, an explosion of unchecked fury, and it’s enacting its angry revenge all over the Spanish countryside.
Once we hit the freeways the C63 S churns out horsepower like creamy butter, slingshotting us across the open landscape. The steering is so precise and reactive, you have to hold onto the meaty, hand-stitched wheel for dear life at high speeds, lest one stray bump or aberration send you leaping into the unforgiving embrace of a Marbella chasm a mile down the steep slopes. Its electronically limited 155 mph top speed never seems far away (180 mph with Driver’s Package option) when you can time warp from 0-60 mph in a blistering 3.9 seconds.
Photo: Nicolas Stecher
As invigorating and delirious as the C63 S Coupé is to drive, you just can't miss the shift points — it's the trickiest and most challenging aspect of the vehicle. Sure, you could rely on the automatic doing the work, but what would be the fun of that? Besides the challenge, switching to manual changes the mapping of the engine to be more linear — it actually reduces torque at low rpms so coming out of corners you can really step on the throttle without the tires losing grip. But don't be fooled — you can still throw the ass out by only pushing the throttle 70%. And you will. Repeatedly.
While in manual the window to upshift is so slim, so unforgiving: miscalculate and power cuts out, leaving you gasping for air as controllers interfere at redline. It’s infuriating, and you curse yourself for not playing the paddles with more virtuosity. But that's the point, the beauty of it all. Everything else is so easy in the C63 Coupé — the power delivery, the handling, the very essence of life — that you want to be challenged. You want to feel like you’re doing something to control this feral creature’s snorting moods. The shifting is the part where, you know, actual driving skill plays a hand. And by no means were we perfect — both Mike and I continuously miss shifts early in our ride around the Costa del Sol wilderness.
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