The New C63 is a Technical Achievement No One Asked for or Wants - TheSmokingTire

It's very complicated, but the question is, is it better or even is it good? Yeah. Well, here it is. This video is about one thing. Optimism? Attempted optimism combined with discovering if Mercedes has ruined the C63. The new C63, which is not actually that new, a bunch of people drove it like more than a year ago in Europe, right? No more V8, people. Right. One of the best engines for a sports sedan ever is... They had a number of them. I mean, they had a number of V8s. All were amazing. It was like Frank's hot sauce. They put that ---- on everything. And it was great. And then this one, they cut the displacement in half from the last one. Last one had a four liter twin turbo. This has a two liter turbo. Turbo. But no, don't. But but before you're like, that's guys, that's that's bad. It's okay because they also made it a hybrid. It's well, let's let's throw out the specs that might get people excited. OK, 671 overall horsepower. Oh, I just got 729 pound feet of torque. So huge. I mean, that's those are big numbers. Yes. To move around 4800 pounds. It is 760 pounds heavier than the last C63. Right. And so right now you're probably thinking, man, if it wasn't that much heavier, it wouldn't need 670 horsepower and 750 torques. Yeah. It also has an electric driven turbocharger similar to what Porsche is doing. It has an electric motor on the rear axle with a two speed gearbox. Correct. It has all wheel drive. It has rear steer. It's got an ediff. It has an ediff adaptive suspension. Yes. And like so many modes, it has eight different driving modes. It has all the technology that is practically available. I mean, it's a lot of hand me down from F1 and from other things. But it's it's very complicated. But the question is, is it better or even is it good? Yeah. Well, let's find out. Folks, the holiday season's here. Time to start thinking of gifts for those important folks in your life. Stuff that maybe they carry around every day. That's right. One of our favorite sponsors is on today's video extra with the future of wallets extra is so much more than just wallets. But at its heart, it is a connected system of everyday carry goods that can help you move through the day more efficiently. Headlining that is the wallet, right? You've got the fan out vibe, which I love. It's RFID resistant aluminum anodized wallet with fanning out those cards. That's where it starts. Then you've got the optional accessories that attach to the wallet using the rubber band. I've got the cash clip on there, but there's also your basic backing plate and of course, the coin trace. You can hide a couple of quarters for those old school parking meters in your extra wallet. There's the finder card, which is the slimmest tracking device you can get right here. Stick that in there and you can track your extra wallet all over the world. There is so much to choose from at extra and they're having a huge holiday sale. Plus given a little extra to the smoking tire, hit the link in the video description, check out the merch, build your package and gift it to someone in your family or friend circle 55% off site wide at extra with our code, hit that link in the description, get it for the holidays. And thank you to extra for sponsoring today's video with their sweet gadgets. Very different sound than the old ones. It sounds like the CLA or GLA 45. Yes. Now it does have more power from the gas engine than those cars do. It's 470. Yeah. 469. Yeah. It's the most, you know, they, they, they reminded us it's the most powerful four cylinder in a production car and like, okay, that is a lot. That's a lot. But the C 63, it was never the fastest car in its class, but the sound and the vibes is what, Oh, malfunction. Well, that says transmission malfunction or possibly diff malfunction. We should do a launch race start. Not possible. Well, I guess you can't do a race start with a check engine light. Should we turn it off and on again? Maybe let's do that real quick. Well, I guess that eliminates the possibility of a launch, which I will say is too bad because we did one before and it does that. Well, it does, but it did something very strange. So when we, during the presentation, they say that the electric motor acts as torque fill, right? You won't feel those shift moments, except the one to two shift. I felt like I was one to two shifting at 15. It was like quite a stutter. It was. And then the two, three shift and beyond it, then torque fill. Right. So that was a really strange, poor programming. I would say. Just a correction here. Mercedes heard our complaints about the jerkiness of the one, two shift, and they thought maybe that isn't how it's supposed to be. So just in case they gave us a second car to check against. And what do you know? This one is actually quite smooth. So we think that first car was having some kind of an issue. And so anything we say from here on out regarding the jerkiness of the one, two shift can be ignored. Now back to our regular program. There's a lot, the gauge cluster looks like, like there is a lot going on. There's a lot of, it shows every setting that you're in for all the different attributes. It shows a bunch of temperatures and things like that. It's got your ADAS stuff up there and, uh, and a numerical tack. It's all, there's a lot happening. Well, you can change it. I mean, there's like eight different screens, which is really nice, but I wanted one, which is funny. And we've seen this problem on a lot of cars. This is the, I think the sportiest mode and my gear selector or indicator is still size four font and in the bottom corner, in the bottom corner. Why isn't it right in the middle above the, let's see if I go to super sport. Oh, now we've got a G-force gauge. That's a targeting system on an F-35 plane though. So we've got this battery pack under the backseat. Yes. Under slash behind the backseat, which does take up some of the trunk and create a little bit of an awkward thing there. Uh, it drives the motor on the rear axle, right? So unlike Porsche's 911 hybrid, uh, but like the Artura and a 296, you can drive on electric power for a very short while. Yeah. It says about eight miles, uh, at a normal speed, it will go up to 81 miles per hour, which is pretty, pretty impressive. This is basically the same exact system I drove in the S class E performance, but I will say that the rear steer in this is much better than it was in that car. If you remember when we drove, remember the SL, the yellow one, where it felt like the back tires had popped and then, uh, the car, the cars we drove after that felt better. This feels like they've updated the programming. Yeah. The GT was better. Yes. So this is more like that, but this, the GT has that, the great V8 also, which is really what kind of makes that car. Definitely. I'll be nice to it for a minute. I think it looks good. The interior is spacious. I like the design of these air vents on the dashboard. Um, there's good, good cup holders, good practical things. Right. Um, but I would add to that, this is the same base price as the new alpha quad, the Julia quad. Yeah. And this interior is way nicer and more impressive looking for the same 10 years later. I know I'm just saying it's a lot nicer in here for the same money. Sure. Okay. I have cooled seats going. That's pleasant. How does it feel to you to drive? I'm very disappointed. Like I want to be, I love the C 63 for so long, but there are work immediately. So many problems. The steering is totally numb, absolutely numb. The brake pedal is very like firm requires a lot of pressure, but there's so little feedback from it. And the, the like force of it on your foot is so strong, so early that my brain thought, well, surely I'm near threshold braking right now, but I was not slowing down that much. And I realized there were two more inches of pedal, but because I, there was no progression in the difficulty of the pedal. And, um, uh, we already talked about the shift point thing and then you go back to the power. So it has all this power, blah, blah, blah, the zero to 60 time and quarter mile time. And this is slower than an M three CS or an M three X drive, which has 130 fewer horsepower, give or take a little bit at all. It's because it weighs, it weighs 900 pounds, 900 pounds, 900 pounds less went now where this car shines to be fair is in the rolling like five to 60 range, because then the, the E drive like helps it off the line when the M three would be trying to build speed. Yeah. And the electric turbo schools up right away. Exactly. So that the technology helps there, but, but dynamically I've also felt like the suspension is too stiff. It feels like there's a lot of spring and we've hit a number of bumps where the back feels like we're hitting bump stops on a relatively smooth road. And it doesn't feel nearly as locked down as the M three does here. Now we can actually explore it. We're not behind a Tesla anymore like that. Yeah. Just that, that just felt like it should have absorbed. What was a pretty mild bump and the backup we are in sport plus right now. We are, but that is the stiffest mode. Okay. Put it in individual, which is my preferred. Yes. That's individuals got the power train into race. And then the suspension is set to comfort. So any better a little bit, a little bit, but not as much as I would like that. That was a big bump. Was that a big bump? That was pretty big. All right. They don't look big. You know, it's an amazing machine. The fact that it can, it transmits the power from the rear motor through the drive shaft to the front. If the rear loses, loses traction. That's insane. Like that's an amazing bit of engineering, but have we ended up with a better car? I don't know. I'll pull over. You can drive. There are other things that are amazing bits of engineering that aren't necessary or, you know, like Chad, GPT, amazing bit of engineering actively making our lives worse. Now I don't expect, you know, everything to be covered in suede for 89,000 bucks. And there's a lot of things in this car that that money has to go towards, but the glove box door and the lower half of the dash are very hard plastic that I would expect in like a Civic. Yeah, I agree. It's so funny. Like this car is a perfect example of like why speed isn't everything. One of the best automotive journalism memories I have is driving the, the 20, I don't know, 15 C63 across Germany. Oh yeah. Right. And it had this hot rod motor in it with an amazing idle. And it was like objectively, you know, not as good as it wasn't as fast as the M3 or I think it was an M5 that Harris was driving, but it was, it just had this unbelievable sound and the way it, it glug glug through the parking lot. And I understand that like, you know, fuel efficiency is a thing we needed, but, but man, the complexity of all of this, it's so video gamey. Like I actually think the Ioniq 5N is like more involved and it's electric. The steering and the brakes are better. Absolutely. And that's electric. And efficiency wise, this thing gets twice the MPGs of an M3. So they've accomplished that goal. Great. Is that why people buy C63? A hundred percent? No. And it's not why that segment exists. Like, you know, the M3, the Alpha, even the stuff from Lexus, like it was this combination of luxury excitement and something that AMG always had above the others, I would say is attitude. And then there was the era, like, like when you drove it, where they started to get the handling, the handling was good. The transmissions were quick. It wasn't the five speed anymore. For me, that was like that into like 2020 was the golden age of C63. And it just seems like, you know, either it's EU regulations or it's average fuel economy. I don't know, but this is just, it's not just off the mark with the engine. It's off the mark with the steering isn't there, the brakes aren't there. And that's disappointing. Yeah. It's just like, it's just not that fun. It's not, it doesn't have any theater to it. It doesn't have any like that spice, but we do have one exhaust tip per cylinder now. So that's important. Got that one up on a Civic Type R. I mean, individually, the technologies in the car are neat. And the engineering is impressive. And the fact that they can make all this work, he said with a check engine light on, but like, I just don't want this. And, and what's so interesting is the 911 hybrid, right? Just not to go back to this, but the reason it's so good is because the hybrid system is invisible. Okay. You just do not know it's there. It's only 150 pounds heavier, 162 pounds heavier than it's non hybrid variant. It's still a six cylinder engine. It's still sounds like it's supposed to sound. It's not like they put the, the 718 motor in the 911, you know, and, and, and made it sound completely different. And, and, and it felt like the efficiency model, right? This feels like the efficiency model. Yeah, it does. And so, and that's just so disappointing because the old version of this car was like a muscle car, hot rod. And it was such a good muscle car, hot rod. And I mean, in fairness, there's rumors that maybe by the time this video goes up, maybe a story will come out. That'll it's a fact that they're going to put a V8 back into it. And we came out here today, Mercedes said, come have a go. And we were like, can it be as bad as those people in Europe said it was a year ago? It's cool. It's an, it's a full-time all wheel drive C-class that has a lot of power, but the interaction we have with it is now so far off the mark of what its competition has. And that was never the case. And that's a bummer. Yeah. I can't believe that there's like Korean EVs on the market right now with like better feel and feed. The EV6GT also, not just the IONIQ 5N, EV6GT has better body control and better steering than this and better brakes. Wow. It's like, how's that happened? It's crazy. What are we doing? You know, sorry to be Debbie Downers here, but that's the vibe of this car. And I think they're going to have a lot of trouble selling these because I don't think it's what their buyer wants. Yeah. Thanks for watching. Thank you to Mercedes for inviting us. Please don't be too mad. Everyone's probably saying the same thing and we'll see you next time. Bye. And remember always fight your tickets on the off the record app available in the Android and iOS store, or go to off the record.com slash TST.