I review Jeremy Clarkson's car... and LAUNCH it to 60mph!

This is the Mercedes-AMG CLK 63 Coupe Black Series and it's a super rare, very cool car and in this video I'm going to tell you all about it, the upgrades that you have over the standard CLK 63. I'm also going to talk you through the mechanical changes, the interior changes, some interesting things have happened inside that cabin and of course the engine upgrades. I'm going to take it for a drive, see what it's like and I'm going to launch it to see how quick it is or isn't from 0 to 60 miles an hour. Mercedes has done six Black Series vehicles so far. Now normally the Black Series is the pinnacle of the range but not in the case of this CLK. There was actually a DTM version which was even rarer and even more expensive and then there's the CLK GTR racing car which was like super rare and super expensive. This was actually the second Black Series they made. The first was the SLK 55. Now let's talk about pricing on these cars. So back in the day this thing would set you back around £100,000. It went on sale in 2008 and in fact they only sold 600 of them worldwide in that single year and that was it, 2008, your lot. As a result these things have held their value extremely well. Back in 2008 it would have cost you just £30,000 more than the standard CLK 63. One of those now for a good one will cost you between £20,000 and £30,000. A decent one of these will still cost you £800,000. This one because it's low mileage, 20,000 miles on this one, about £120,000. Now this particular CLK Black Series could be worth even more because it's rumoured Jeremy Clarkson used to own it. In fact he posted a picture of this very car on his Twitter feed back in January 2015. If you're interested I'll put a link to that Twitter post in the description of this video. Now if you're thinking about buying a CLK 63 Black Series or even a normal CLK or any used car for that matter, it's important to get the car's history checked to make sure you aren't buying something that's been stolen, it's got outstanding finance or has accident damage which has been badly repaired which could put you or your family at risk and I recommend for doing that you check out Carvertical. So I did a vehicle history check on this particular car and thankfully it came back completely clean. However there are plenty of used cars out there with problems. So look here's an example of a car on Carvertical that has come up as having previous damage and the good thing about Carvertical is that you can actually look at some of the damage photos. I mean look at that. So you can see the kind of damage that has been done to a car that you may be thinking of buying that you had no idea was ever damaged. So if you're thinking about buying a used car make sure you check out Carvertical. I'll put a link to their website in the description and in the pinned comment. Anyway let's get on with the review. So what do you get for your extra money over the standard CLK 63? Obviously a massively uprated engine with stacks more horsepower right? Well no actually you don't. It's pretty much the same 6.2 litre naturally aspirated V8. All Mercedes did was tweak the inlet, the exhaust and the ECU and they've increased horsepower from 480 in the standard car to 507 here in the black series. So not a massive gain at all. Torque's the same as well 630 newton meters. Now this engine has been hand built by a chap called Sandro Pierca I think. Anyway we'll find out what his handiwork is like later on because I'm going to launch this thing. You see it's supposed to launch 60 in 4.3 seconds but does it really? I'm going to find out. I'm also going to talk you through some of the things to look out for if you're buying one of these cars or just the normal CLK 63 in terms of reliability and stuff like that. But before we go further let's just check out something else to do with this engine and the changes they made to it. The exhaust. Now one of the great things about cars back in 2008 is that they weren't fitted with petrol particulate filters so you got to experience the full aural delights of their exhaust system. So let's have a listen to this black series. Go on start it up. Oh give it some revs. That's it right there. Okay so that's interesting. So while it sounds great still like modern cars this one has a soft limiter. So when you're stationary and you want to experience the noise of that beautiful naturally aspirated V8 you can't. You can only rev it to like 3,000 rpm but even then it does still sound good. So let's hear it again. Give it some more revs. Right that's enough because it hasn't got a petrol particulate filter. I'm probably getting poisoned right now. As well as the tweaks to the exhaust and the engine MG also tweaked the black series gearbox. Now it's the same seven speed torque converter auto that you've got in the normal CLK 63 but they reprogrammed it slightly to make it give better faster and more responsive shifts. But we'll find out a bit more about that when actually drive the thing. Another change they made was to give this curious gear selector. So rather than the normal like big lever you've got this small little knob that's made out of solid aluminium and it's quite stiff. You're probably thinking that a mild tweak to the engine the exhaust and the gearbox certainly don't warrant a £30,000 premium over the standard CLK back in the day and no it doesn't. But then Mercedes did make quite a few of the changes and some substantial ones to the chassis. So this car is fitted with a rated coilover suspension so it's got new springs, it's got new dampers with bump and rebound so they're adjustable if you can be bothered to adjust them. You also get a limited slip differential on the rear axle and AMG even widened the car's track so they've increased the width between the wheels on the rear axle by 66 millimetres and 75 millimetres on the front to improve cornering. That brings on to the styling changes over the standard CLK 63 because the widened track means that Mercedes had to fit this car with some blistered wheel arches and that's what really makes this car stand out. I love just how aggressive this car looks from the front. They also gave it a redesigned more aggressive bumper and look we've got some carbon fibre bits here over these air intakes which are actually real, there's no fakery there. There's some more carbon fibre here at the back so this boot lip spoiler and this new rear diffuser, lovely. They've also tweaked the rear bumper as well and the all-important black series there just on the AMG badge, it is quite subtle. Finally at the sides apart from the obvious blistered wheel arches the only major change really are these upgraded forged alloy wheels, 19 inches in diameter which was considered big back in 2008. Oh by the way don't you just love this about the CLK the way you have these frameless windows and frameless doors look at, I can't get out, do it that way, see frameless doors and windows it's just so cool when you have the windows down. It's got a great silhouette this car hasn't it. Here on the inside the most obvious change over standard CLK 63 are these glorious bucket seats, they are wonderful however they are quite body hugging which is great when you're going around corners quickly but not ideal if you're a little bit large in size because you probably won't fit in them. If you can fit it in them they are actually very comfortable. Another major change which I like is the addition of lots of carbon fibre especially on the door cards look at that it's got the AMG logo embossed in it as well, it's really cool. Then there's this steering wheel which can't quite decide what shape it is so it's like normal steering wheel round at the top it goes a bit squarey at the sides and yeah and then it's got a flattish bottom. Another thing I'm not sure about is this look so a high performance car like this with a high revving V8 you know it redlines over 7,000 rpm but for some reason the rev counter is only the same size as the clock so Mercedes thinks it's just as important for you to know the precise time as it does your engine speed. I'm not convinced about that I'm convinced about the little bit of badge we've got here black series there it's nice having that but then there's a stop start button down here yet it doesn't work on this car I don't know if it's this car in particular or whether it worked or not look you press it nothing happens look you have to turn the key what's that all about also what all these blank switches about this is a hundred thousand pound car and there's loads of blank switches there what am I missing out on I don't know maybe it's stuff like heating and cooling for the seats because obviously you don't get that with these buckets but it just looked so cheap in such an expensive car then there's the fact that back in 2008 the interior quality of Mercedes wasn't exactly the best yeah the squidgy materials but bits like these climate control buttons are just very cheap feeling and I'm not even going to mention the satellite navigation system because it's a 2008 satellite navigation system so it's pointless nowadays and then there's the fact that Mercedes used to use foot operated parking brakes look got a foot operated parking brake there's an extra pedal in here but that's not as annoying as the driving position because for some reason in this right hand drive car the the same position is just so offset so I'm sitting so far right of the steering wheel look look if I do this that's the center of my chest so you're twisted that way the pedals are twisted that way so you're kind of like playing a game of twister while you're driving along what's that all about? I also want to know what AMG was thinking when they decided to remove the CLK's rear seats now you're probably thinking Matt it's obvious this is a lightweight special they've done that to reduce the weight however it's not a lightweight special this thing weighs the same 1760 kilos as a standard CLK with rear seats now these areas are recessed so you could use them for putting luggage in there though it's very hard to get luggage in this car past these bucket seats which don't move forward very much at all I also want to know what's going on with the fact you've got AMG branded floor mats here in the back for literally no one to appreciate and there's another thing that's a bit annoying in terms of practicality you see for some reason they've relocated the battery in this car and it's it's under here right now there are ports where you can connect to jump start it underneath the bonnet and places like that but if you need to replace the battery because it's dead or old or whatever you have to go see your Mercedes tech and remove all these bits of trim to get the battery under there great another thing that hinders the CLK Black Series practicality is this big strut brace that runs between the two rear shock towers now they do help increase the car's structural rigidity and you've got another one at the front between the two front shock towers yeah they're part of the chassis upgrades I forgot thank you Google anyway enough of that what the top search results are let's find out what the top driving results are because I'm going to take this car for a spin now okay finally time to see what the CLK Black Series is like to drive the first thing I'm going to do is I should do that because the engine is lovely that 6.2 litre naturally aspirated V8 just sings and sings all the way to its 7,000 rpm redline it is an epic engine and it makes a real fruity noise as well let's do it again so much fun so much fun but obviously you get that in the normal CLK63 don't you just with a bit less horsepower so what is this Black Series in particular like to drive well the first thing is that even though it's got stiffer suspension it doesn't actually feel any stiffer in fact it feels better over bumps than the standard car that often is usually the way with uprated suspension it just deals with bumps better it just does and the way this one's been set up is really really nice the interesting thing about this Black Series is that when AMG originally conceived it they wanted it to be their version of the Porsche 911 GT3 so does it feel as sporty to drive as a 911 GT3 of a similar era well here comes my first corner we are going to find out I'll tell you what the front end's pretty good on this much better than it would be on a normal CLK63 but Porsche 911 GT3 not so much it's really good at getting its power down I thought it was going to be struggling I'd read reports about this being a bit of a tail happy monster and that the traction control wouldn't really help you out much but this is doing fine and I'm quite surprised by the steering I thought it'd be awful but it's not it it may be offset and a little bit uncomfortable but it's got a nice weight to it and it's really responsive you know it does feel like an aggressive sporty car yet on the flip side if you just dial it back a bit you want to cruise it's not annoying in any way shape or form you can easily daily this thing as long as you can put up with the fuel consumption which is going to be around 80 miles to the gallon well if you can afford this car this hundred thousand pound car you probably don't care and you're probably just going to leave it in the garage anyway appreciate it anyway I'm going to put the gearbox into manual mode and see how it is oh there we go pulling away there the traction control did have to intervene and it's totally dry oh yeah and do you know what I take it all back when you're in lower gears and in manual and you haven't got the slushy automatic gearbox doing its own thing yes it does break traction pretty easily and it's interesting in fact I'm going to do it again how the stability control seems to like pause for a bit it lets the wheel spin up a bit and it's like wakes up goes oh oh am I supposed to do something all right I'll just tell the power now by which point the car's already stepped out slightly I'm gonna do it again actually let's get into let's get into first gear there we go yeah yeah see oh oh oh I'll tell you what in manual mode the gearbox isn't as slow as I thought it would be it's actually quite quick on the upshifts I mean it's no dual clutch system but it's actually pretty decent in a moment I'm going to launch this car to see how quick it is from 0 to 60 miles an hour but before I do I thought I'd talk you through some of the potential problems you could have if you're looking to buy one of these cars so certain things to look out for for the CLK black series or just the normal CLK 63 let's start with this engine now it's normally very very strong and reliable but they can suffer occasionally with problems with the head bolts and it's usually the head bolts at the back of the engine which can corrode due to fluid leaks and then fluid can get into the engine and cause a hydraulic lock which will just ride off the engine entirely another thing you might find is that when you start the car you can get the odd rattle and that can be the cam chain tensioner is failing it's not a big deal so you could get that repaired another thing to watch out for is juddering from the gearbox the changes should actually be very smooth so if they're not it could be a warning sign now what you should do when you're on your test drive is do a few manual down changes to make sure it doesn't judder because that's when they'll really show up the drop links and bushings for the anti-roll bars can wear out and a telltale sign is knocking when you go over a bump don't worry though it's not the most expensive fix in the world check the windows go up and down properly and that when you open and close the doors they do this little thing where they go back underneath the roof line like that also just give them a bit of a hit and make sure they don't rattle while the clk did get anti-corrosion protection from the factory it can still rust and the places to look out for are the boot lid just under here the rear wheel arches the front wheel arches the lower parts of the doors and the wings the final thing to check is that if you hear weird clicking sound when you turn the ignition on it could be that the stepper motor for the air conditioning has failed and that's a real pain because to replace it you have to remove the whole dash finally then let's see how quick this thing is really from 0 to 60 miles an hour especially 4.3 seconds but we'll find out with my specialist timing gear up here i'm going to launch it let's do it a little bit of tyre spin we're off though oh that's good even though the wheels were spinning a bit at the beginning did 0 to 60 in 4.6 seconds i'll take that