It’s a V8, it causes the right kind of tremors from the exhaust, it has all the external bits and pieces to indicate a high-performance car, it’s a sinister AMG and, bizarre as it may sound, it’s politically correct too! What the hell is going on here? At the numerous traffic signals in Stuttgart, the Mercedes-Benz CLS 63 AMG that I am piloting shuts off like a well-mannered front-bencher. Hey, I thought AMGs were all about blasting the poor supermini behind with a teeny-weeny tap of the loud pedal and generally making Germany more indebted to Saudi Arabia. Since when did it become Aufrecht Melcher Green?
Horror of horrors, that 63 badge does not even mean a normally aspirated 6.2-litre V8, but a smaller 5.5-litre V8 motor. Welcome to tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen, a day when you can have all the performance you can wish for without drying up the oil wells. Not exactly, but you get what I mean.
And the new CLS 63 AMG is all about performance, and how! It consumes 32 per cent less than its predecessor! Its CO2 emission is only 231 grams per km as compared to the preceding fast-banana’s 345 grams per km! You have an ECO light in the instrument console, making you feel as good as somebody from Greenpeace! Wait a sec... Is this an AMG I am talking about? This is not my kind of performance. Shouldn’t I be saying something like ‘While scrolling through the iPod in search of my favourite song, I wafted past the 911 GT3, as it struggled to stop me from overtaking. Ho hum.’ But there you have it – this is the future of AMGs: mind-numbing performance without the associated guilt complex (not applicable to our super rich – they only have luxury condominium complexes or gilt complexes).
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