Instrumented Test
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Power nap.
No, you do not want to fall asleep at the wheel of any car, certainly not a 4943-pound, 577-hp sedan with a $140,425 base price. But there we were, almost dozing off in the pilot’s perch of this insanely over-the-top S-class, enjoying a hot-stone massage, perfumed and purified air ($350), and the soothing sounds of the local classical music station pumped through the Burmester High-End 3D audio system ($6400), which we did not mistake with the standard Burmester offering because the metal speaker grilles say “High End” right on them.
Just as we were contemplating whether those finely perforated tweeter covers would work to pull a decent shot of espresso, the car served up an entirely different stimulant, sounding a warning over the Wagner. It had noticed our inattention, not to the road, per se, but to the wheel, which we had been only lackadaisically fingering. Hands moved more firmly in contact, the alarm subsided and the car resumed steering for us, “seeing” the freeway lane markings and gradually ping-ponging between them. Before the gentle sway of the chassis could lull us back towards our daydreams, we pulled off at a Starbucks.
Distraction is the calling card of the 2014 Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG, a holdover from the S-class flagship luxury sedan on which it is based and with which it shares an entire SkyMall catalog’s worth of unnecessary but fascinating technology. But this is an authentic high-performance machine too, powered by a 5.5-liter V-8 wearing a brace of turbochargers and producing 664 lb-ft of peak torque. The S63’s standard four-wheel-drive system takes that twist and converts it into a 3.8-second 0-60 time. Keep the pedal down and you’ll roll through the traps in 12.2 seconds at 118 mph, which is still 69 mph below its governed 187-mph top speed.
Electronic Judo
Those are great numbers, but the S63 is a great car to drive as well. Select Sport mode and the chassis and steering stiffen up, allowing for more accurate inputs than you would expect for this heavyweight. The adaptive air suspension not only keeps the mass in check, but also seems to employ some automotive judo to keep the S63’s weight working for you. Brake-based torque vectoring certainly helps, while the 67-percent rear torque bias allows the car to retain a rear-drive character. Grabby brakes and 20-inch wheels wrapped in staggered Continental ContiSportContact SP tires provide repeatable 155-foot stops from 70 mph. The only weakness in the mechanical package is the seven-speed multi-clutch automatic transmission, which seems to suffer its own problems with distraction at low speeds.
But there are other things about the S63 that aren’t right. Despite fitting the AMG Speedshift MCT transmission instead of the conventional automatic used in the standard S-class, launch control was not included here. Mercedes did retain the oddball two-spoke steering wheel and grandpa’s column-mounted robo-shifter from the regular S-class, touch points which should have been replaced with sportier AMG pieces. And despite the instrument panel being overwhelmed by a pair of 12.3-inch LCD screens complete with chrome-look virtual gauges, what this car really needs is a head-up display to project some of its abundance of information where the driver can see it without getting sucked into the swirling pixels. As it stands, glancing down at the dashboard during hard cornering and seeing the huge navigation screen spinning can almost induce queasiness.
The S63 is an AMG product for our era, in which “everything is amazing and nobody’s happy,” as the comedian Louis C.K. puts it. Which helps explain why we spent more time “testing” this Benz’s self-steering adaptive cruise control, part of the $2800 Driver Assistance Package that will do everything to keep you from crashing short of paying for that coffee, than we did pushing this latest AMG model around our handling course. Because pulling 0.93 g of lateral grip on our skidpad is not nearly the novelty keeping you from drifting into a ditch is.
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