Fans of the egg-faced volte-face will be smirking into their coffee mugs this week at the news that Mercedes-AMG’s incoming CLE 63 coupé is to get not four, not six but eight cylinders.
What’s more, when the current C63 saloon and estate come in for their mid-life refresh next year, they too will become available with AMG’s new mild-hybrid V8 set-up.
This was never the plan. Mercedes wanted – and I use that word loosely – the 2.0-litre four-pot M139 to succeed the C63’s 4.0-litre V8 M177 full- stop and threw in punchy electrical assistance to sweeten the deal. The diddy M139 would be marketed on the might of its world-beating specific output and its Formula 1 technology.
In fairness, from a purely logical standpoint, this wasn’t an insane idea. The M139’s specific output in the current C63 is 236bhp per litre. It’s a snort-inducing stat that in years gone by was attainable only if you left an RB26DETT unattended in a tobacco-perfumed workshop in Chiba Prefecture.
It’s an awesome feat of engineering in a road car with Apple CarPlay and a big boot, that will tolerate both freezing starts in Siberia and being ragged senseless in bitumen-melting heat on a Saudi expressway.
So the M139 is special. And expensive. The block is chill-cast, there are lots of forged bits and it’s hand-assembled. If, when this engine surfaced in the A45 hatch in 2019, you had told me there was a 90sec delay when you started the car to allow time for warm water to be pumped around the block and tolerances to sweeten up, DTM-style, I might actually have believed you.
But the M139 just isn’t the right donkey for the C63. Not at this moment. Or possibly ever.
Sales have been dismal. PR-wise, it has been a disaster. Electrification has also made the car shockingly porky. Perhaps BMW could have got away with such a dramatic downsizing for the mainstay of its M portfolio, because the M3 has never been quite as ‘engine first, chassis second’ as the C63, and of course there is precedent in the E30.
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Yes, it's a u-turn by AMG. However, in the general scheme of things, it is one of many u-turns (related to EVs) by legacy car makers over the last 12 months. To be fair, this particular u-turn was anticipated because of the heavy criticism and poor sales of the current C63. At least it shows that AMG listens and responds to feedback. That said, the other recent u-turns by Mercedes and other car makers about continuing with ICE and hybrid power trains probably gave AMG a 'permission structure' for this particular u-turn. Off-topic: The i8 might be under appreciated but it's not a good car. You might as well be talking about the Fisker Karma.