Mercedes’s subtle sedan is easy to like—especially if you love technology.
(Bloomberg) — If you’re a technophobe, this is not the car for you.
The Mercedes-AMG S63 E Performance has more tech visible just behind the steering wheel than the latest cars from Porsche, Aston Martin and Ferrari combined. It’s what makes this high-performance S Class alluring to its target audience: wealthy early adopters interested in the latest and greatest innovations available on the market. They trust Mercedes to deliver it to them in flawless, intuitive and instantaneous form.
Then there’s me. Last week, I hit the road for what I had anticipated to be a casual drive up Route 1 from Santa Monica to Malibu. The heads-up display that confronted me when I turned on the vehicle was anything but casual: It lit up like a casino floor at midnight. Blue arrows undulated across my sight lines; road sensors, hazard warnings and navigation icons blinked as I pulled onto the street. It was as if I had an entire road atlas projected right in front of my eyes—above a 3D driver display behind the steering wheel and a dashboard console that depicted, in addition to such practical matters as speed and fuel gauges, more esoteric concerns like the temperatures of the electric motor and battery and the power flow of the entire drive system.
I toggled through an AMG-specific “Supersport” graphics display that offered various screens via a vertical menu structure. It all felt like the automotive equivalent of how I imagine those new Apple Vision glasses must feel when you first pull them over your eyes—the world translated virtually and layered over my brain like a web. I had not anticipated that I’d be monitoring suspension settings and telemetry data on a leisurely drive north.
It didn’t help that I had arrived to drive this 791-horsepower hybrid in a 2014 Porsche 911, which is ancient in car years. I gingerly made my way onto the highway and worked to recalibrate my senses. If I had any hope of successfully following this augmented reality system to help me arrive to a scheduled lunch—at a white-capped, modern mansion high in the hills above the Pacific—my mind needed to make a quantum leap forward. I needed to master this four-wheeled video game.
I breathed a prayer to the computer gods (“Are you there Steve Jobs? It’s me, Hannah.”) and channeled my tech-wiz 10-year-old niece, then pressed the gas pedal.
Quiet Luxury in the Car World
From the outside, the S63 E Performance hardly hints at its radical interior. A few touches signal that it has been tuned by Mercedes’s sporty AMG factory in Affalterbach, Germany, including the radiator grille, trapezoid tailpipes and noticeable air inlets along the front. But it lacks the aggressive design notes we see on other vehicles that approach 800 horsepower—such things as spoilers, gaping vents, chiseled sides and aero kits befitting a child’s Transformer toy. Even the Mercedes star hood ornament that typically sits on the front of the car has been replaced by an AMG emblem in silver and black, laid flush with the hood. As with everything in Mercedes’s S Class line, the S 63 E Performance is subtle to the point of looking plain, especially if it’s painted white, like the one I was driving.
It struck me as I whizzed by horse farms and juice stands that maybe this is what quiet luxury looks like in the car world. I must have passed a dozen S Class sedans during my day behind the steering wheel. To the untrained (read: Non-AMG fan) eye, they all looked the same. They’re ubiquitous in the tony quarters of LA’s coastal highways, and difficult in general to distinguish from other sedans in the Mercedes-Benz lineup—even for me, who’s paid to think about such matters. Mercedes doesn’t plan to announce US pricing on this vehicle until the end of the year, but in Germany it’s currently listed at €208,392 ($228,300). If we define quiet luxury as expensive things that look nonspecific, this qualifies.
In addition to the tech, the understated sleeper look is a prime reason people would buy an S Class, even one from AMG, says Michael Schiebe, chief executive officer of Mercedes-AMG, over lunch at my destination in Malibu. It happens to have taken only a few minutes to acquaint myself with the finer points of the infotainment system (or MBUX) to get the hang; it doesn’t bury such critical commands as radio selection and seat warmers multiple layers deep. The commands directing me as to which roads to take were intuitive and precise.
Back to being subdued: The S Class owner will want something that feels adult and low-key, Schiebe says. That would be high-end but nondescript, like a black TUMI roller case. This qualifies.
Electric Performance, Technical Knowhow
The AMG S63 hybrid combines a hand-built 4.0L V8 Biturbo engine with an AMG-specific hybrid powertrain and a new high-performance battery. It has nine speeds in its automatic transmission system and all-wheel-drive. It has been stiffened to superior levels of rigidity compared to non-AMG S Class sedans and is very quiet inside. Mercedes says it gets 33 km (20 miles) of all-electric driving (official EPA estimates are expected to confirm this when the car goes on sale by the end of this year). I didn’t notice the shift from all-electric to hybrid mode. I was too busy connecting my phone to Bluetooth, a rather imperceptible transition. External charging can happen via the 3.7 kW onboard AC charger, at a charging station, through a wall-box or in a household socket.
I tried my best to thrash the AMG S63 hybrid as I gained elevation on Kanan Road; I toggled through seven drive modes, including Electric, Comfort, Sport+ and Slippery, as I cruised past Malibu Lake; I felt the weight shift as I dipped down crags cut by millennia of geological excavation. But I couldn’t beat the active roll stabilization and active rear-axle steering that ironed it all out.
It was fast enough to earn that AMG badge. With a momentous 1,055 pound-feet of torque, it goes to 60 mph in 3.2 seconds. And it never fluttered, never faltered, never indicated I had taxed it in any way. It lacks the raw aggression and tactile feel of a sedan powered by internal combustion, like the Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S, which boasts a 4.0-liter V8 engine. Then again, that’s not the point. This is about cerebral, not visceral, sensation. The AMG S63 hybrid is a big, computerized brain of a car, calibrated like a robot for perfect telemetry and flawless acceleration. If you want personality, go elsewhere.
It’s the technology that makes the AMG S63 hybrid great—and usable. Notwithstanding my initial recoil, I glommed onto the MBUX system in a matter of minutes, fearlessly rerouting myself in the navigation along Mulholland Highway and diving into the driving settings with reckless abandon. I flipped on the massaging seats and turned up the volume on the 360-degree Dolby Atmos sound system as I settled in for my afternoon drive home. I could have turned off all of the heads-up-display aids and driving nannies when they popped up again on Route 1, but this would have defeated their purpose.
Like power without control, technology that’s difficult to decipher is useless. With the AMG S63 E Performance, Mercedes has translated the most complex technological systems on today’s market into elements that enhance, rather than detract from, our lives—even for those who don’t know we want them.
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