Here’s your daily reminder that, in the automotive world, big and heavy don’t mean slow. Sure, a small two-seater with a featherweight chassis can skip from corner to corner, but how about sprinting from a stop to over 180 mph in 30 seconds? It’s an impressive feat for any car, never mind one that can massage your back while carrying five people in comfort.
That’s the Mercedes-AMG S63 E Performance in a nutshell. A new video from AutoTopNL shows the big luxury sedan in its natural environment – inhaling unrestricted sections of German autobahn at speeds well over 100 mph. The video gets right to business; it opens with a flat-out run from a dead stop to 295 kph on the speedometer. That equals 183 mph, and while we aren’t shown a specific time to get there, our stopwatch reveals a scant 31.16 seconds. That’s not bad considering this sizable sedan weighs over 2.5 tons.
Of course, having gobs of horsepower certainly helps. To refresh your memory, the new AMG S63 E Performance marries a twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V8 with a single electric motor. The result is a combined output of 791 hp and 1,055 pound-feet of torque. For context, a new Ram 2500 truck with a Cummins diesel has 1,075 lb-ft of twist and it’s rated to tow a freaking aircraft carrier. On the other side of the performance world, the S63 can utilize its modest electric power to cruise for upwards of 20 miles without using the combustion engine at all.
You won’t find any such economical travel in this video. In fact, following the initial full-throttle run, we see another pull that sends the speedometer to 299 kph (186 mph). Mercedes-Benz merely states the S63’s top speed is beyond 180 mph, but 186 just might be it. The clip shows the big Merc steadily progressing to that speed, then holding steady there for several seconds.
Such power, performance, and luxury doesn’t come without a price and we mean that literally. Official figures for the US haven’t been announced yet, but the Mercedes-AMG S63 E Performance should start just shy of $200,000.
