>> It's got a V8 that lectures the American big
blocks. Handling that will make you forget the Italians
make cars and a blend of confidence and comfort even the
Japanese can't figure out. How did these people lose that
war? Let's jump in Germany's pure hotrod, the 2010
Mercedes C63 AMG and check the tank. [ Music ]
^M00:00:28:15 Let's face
it, the C63 lives in the shadow of BMW's M3. Part of
that is the stigma of the C-class being a starter Benz
while the 3-series has always been a car buff's favorite,
and the C63 only comes as a Sedan. [Music] Oh, and then
there's the transmission, but unless you're just a fan-boy
of something else, prepare to be converted. Now, the
first thing I noticed about our C63 is it is equipped with
the AMG leather-seating package, which I call the
pain-in-the-ass package. Now I get it. These are great
on track day which I don't do. I look at this car as a
lovely gentlemen's hot rod, but these are going too far
for everyday use. They're really deep, really confining.
They have integrated headrest that I think look kinda
horsey in a car like this. It's all fine and dandy to
have sports seats, but in a car that has a power-rear
sunshade, 400 pounds of air-conditioning gear, and an
automatic transmission, let's be reasonable.
[Cars racing] Now once you wedge your fat ass into these
seats, you do have a pretty functional cabin, tidy and
compact, of course, being a C-class, our car is relatively
basic because under the magic door is not something that
Monte Hall's pointing it to, instead it's a relatively
limited head unit. We don't have the nav on this guy, if
we did it would be a pop-up seven-inch display that goes
up and down like a piece of toast right here. Instead
we've got this which all C63s are gonna have, that's what
about a five-inch, sort of a basic utility display. You
also have a very simple command controller to go with it
down here. You can function your radio this way AM, FM,
or Sirius Satellite Radio, over on the disk button, you
got access to your single slot CD, no DVD playback, that
comes with the nab head unit, and if you go the CD menu of
the CD area, you get down to the auxiliary which takes you
over here to the world's worst place auxiliary jack, you
cannot reach it. And right next to that you see my iPod
Touch is hooked up to the universal media interface they
call it for just about every generation of iPod's,
iPhone's, iPod Touches, pretty good support on that. Now
there's no blue-tooth streaming on this car again this is
the basic head unit, well, you do have blue-tooth
telephony and some basic phone book technology, as well.
Now tech toys that are on the driving front include this
wheel with a flat bottom kinda Audi-esq. I don't like
these things but they seem to say boy racers so they sell
well in this market segment. You do have paddles for the
automatic transmission. They're up here on the wheel
which isn't the best place for them, in my estimation, but
they're all made of metal they've got a good strong feel
to them not kind of flexible and loosey-goosey like some
cars. And those paddles control a one-choice only
seven-speed automatic with three modes controlled by this
button here. Comfort is your everyday driving mode, sport
is an automatic mode but the shifts are more crisp and the
RPM's are held higher and then if you go to manual you're
basically running this thing like a manual gearbox, it
will go all the way to redline until you tell it to go to
a higher gear or until you do get to the red line it will
shift to protect itself. Well, in addition to this
display right here, you just don't want to look at it and
go super Spartan, you can close that and just about
everything on that display is available on that display.
The one in the center of the speedometer in a nice sort of
a teutonic black and white LCD very purposeful.
^M00:04:03 [ Music ]
^M00:04:11
Ah, yes. Here in lies the heart of the glowering beast,
Pharoah, yes, but uncommonly refined a 451-horsepower, 6.2
some-odd, liter V8 without any tricks. This is honest
horsepower done with displacement, not superchargers, or
turbos and built by a guy. Patrick - whatever that says,
and then it goes in the car when he signs off on it, real
Artisan stuff. That 450 horse is backed up by 443 foot
pounds of torque, a 0 to 60 squirt will happen in about 4
point 3 they promise, honestly, most folks get these on
the track and do closer to 4 or even under. The downside
is the MPG 12/19, big motor, no two ways about it. You
get hit with a gas-guzzler tax, also, so it's going to
sting at purchase time. The best way to describe the
power in this car is right now. Lots of it, but most
importantly right now. There's no nonsense of blowers or
turbos that are having to spool it up, it just goes like a
son-of-a-bitch the minute you step on the pedal. You know
I honestly would not ask for a manual gearbox in this car.
This is the greatest automatic ever made. In comfort mode
this car is entirely livable, in sport mode it's a great
sporting automatic and in manual mode you can go just
absolutely nuts. Okay let's price our 2010 C63. It
starts off at $60,300 but $2100 of that is gas-guzzler
tax. [Inaudible] you got to get the multi-media package
which is hard drive-based nabs, serious traffic, Harman
Kadon Logic 7 surround sound, 6 gigabytes of space for
your media, still over priced at $3300. So goes for the
universal media interface for all kinds of portable
connectivity, $1200, who are they kidding, get the iPod
adapter for a more reasonable $375. The other cool
tech-toy you want is a rear-view camera; right? $450
a-la-carte, that's the only way to get one. And if your
totally committed or committable, look for that AMG P31
package, it's about $6,000 dollars to go even faster.
