There was a time in Merc’s history, when the ‘63’ designation equated to a 6.3-litre V8 engine of unrelenting potency. In a more modern era, while the cubic capacity of the engine has been reduced to 4.0-litres, with turbocharging, up to a stratospheric 510bhp is now on tap (coupe; 476bhp estate), which is enough to zip a two-tonnes SUV from 0-60mph in a remarkable 3.5s and upwards to a restricted 174mph.
Developed by AMG for its parent company, Merc has spent the customary amount of time circulating the Nurburgring Circuit to gift its new model line-up a supersports pedigree. There is no denial of its pinnacle achievements, even though most of the cars exported from Germany will be sold in markets with strict speed limits in force. There is no final price information as yet but slightly north of £70,000 would be a fair expectation.
It needs to be highlighted that these new models are not radically upgraded from the previous generation estate and coupe variants but they do include a number of enhancements, starting with revised head and tail-lamp units, revised tailpipes, the MBUX in-car entertainment system, a new ‘slippery’ mode for the driver-adjustable chassis settings and a fresh design of optional 21.0-inch diameter alloy wheels.
Now typical of the rest of the Merc range, a 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster is positioned ahead of the driver, with a 10.25-inch touchscreen at the top of the centre stack. Merc has spent a lot of time improving the speech recognition aspects of its MBUX system and it can now handle regional variances and, using artificial intelligence, it can make sense of muffled words and even odd pronunciations.
The cabin is clad in super luxurious leather and, as an option, inflatable airbags within the high-back seat bolsters can fill and deflate automatically, to hold-in both driver and front passenger during more boisterous cornering manoeuvres. The seats can also be heated (and chilled) for added comfort. A range of ‘behind the scenes’ chassis settings that ranges from Basic to Advanced and Pro to Master provides an additional string of command settings to enhance the overall driving and dynamic envelope. AMG will never let you forget that its racing expertise lies behind the prodigious capabilities of both estate and coupe versions of the GLC range.
The 9-speed automatic transmission now features a wet-clutch for crisper start-offs and automatic throttle-blipping and even blockshifts are possible, accompanied by a driver selectable exhaust tone (loud, or not-so-loud). The new GLC63S models are technological tour-de-forces and, of course, you do pay for the privilege, even though they seem like veritable bargains alongside equivalent cars from Bentley, or Rolls Royce, even though there is very little to choose between them in terms of status.
