Oversteer hands at the ready: it’s the C63 F1 Edition

Welcome to a new era. 

Yes, it’s the era without great bellowing V8s in AMG saloons. It’s the era of drivetrain complexity that’s already making us consider engineering school, just to understand the concepts at work. But what it really has become – perhaps least importantly of all, so of course it’s our main focus – is the era of cars whose full names take longer to say than the car takes to go from nought to 62mph. 

Go on, say the whole lot out loud, at your regular pace and cadence, and time it: Mercedes-AMG C63 S E Performance. It took us four seconds on the dot, after our third coffee – 0.6 seconds longer than the car takes to shift its 2.1-tonne bulk to the metric tonne. Tack on ‘F1 Edition’ and the car’s probably already on the licence-shredding side of 80mph. 

What this rather circuitous introduction brings us to, logically enough, is the Mercedes-AMG C63 E Performance F1 Edition. It’s available for the first model year of the new 2.0-litre C63 AMG, takes its cues from the F1 medical car, and presumably celebrates all the success Mercedes F1 used to have.

Although to be fair, the new C63 has more claim to an F1 Edition than any other before it – the newly hybridised, electrically turbocharged four-cylinder engine is pure Formula One anoraking. And, like the F1 powerplants, it’s the kind of engine that’s unlikely to quicken pulses by description alone. Demonstration, on the other hand, will show the full effects of 670bhp and 752lb ft (comfortably more than the turbo 4.0-litre V8 from the old C63, in case anyone’s counting), with a 3.4-second dash from a standstill to the national speed limit, which is laughably adrift from the C63’s own limited top speed at 174mph. 

At this point, you’re likely curious (or indeed impatient to find out) what the F1 Edition grants the prospective C63 buyer. Well, there’s what you’d rather expect from a special edition: wheels and a body kit. In this case, it’s forged 20-inch wheels in matt black (with a ‘tasteful’ red accent around the rim that apparently apes the F1 medical car), as well as an aero pack that includes a bigger front splitter and extra ‘diffuser board’, which we would be lying if we said we understood. 

From there, F1 Edition buyers can revel in a special ‘alpine grey’ paint, which is apparently an exclusive offering. Contain your enthusiasm however you choose. Combined with some less-than-subtle AMG logos on the flanks and more red paint than a John Carpenter movie, the result is... perhaps not the Q car a new C63 could be.

And, just in case potential buyers were worried that the F1 Edition’s inherent loutishness would be hidden under a bushel with a regular car cover, Mercedes will chuck in an ‘AMG Indoor Car Cover with F1 logo’. Well, that’s the end of subtlety, then – welcome to a new era.

TEXT Craig Jamieson