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Mercedes-AMG GLC 63 review: another hugely complex hybrid
£108,305 when new
What is this, then?
A car that goes big whichever yardstick you’re measuring it against. The Mercedes-AMG GLC 63 S E Performance allies a hefty 671bhp powerplant to a 2,310kg body that happens to be wearing a £108,995 price tag. And yeah, its name is pretty sizeable too.
I don’t know where to start…
Let’s start by winding the clock back ten whole months to our first go in this car’s saloon and estate sibling, the latest Mercedes-AMG C63. It’s not a car that bowled us over, its four-cylinder hybrid setup feeling overwrought after the muscle car swagger of its older namesakes.
Well, this is the first time we’ve got our hands on this powerplant since, though with C63 sales now finally underway - at a similarly stocky £98,155 - perhaps we’ll finally get to square one of those up against a BMW M3 in the coming months.
While this GLC63 is almost 150kg heavier, much less of that weight is being carried on its shoulders. Halving the cylinder count of a performance car feels a less sacrilegious act when the car is already something of a sin in the first place. Namely, a fast SUV.
But people love these things, right?
Indeed, and the GLC 63 wades in with an enviable Top Trump card. A 470bhp tune of the Mercedes-AMG A45’s 2.0-litre engine sits up front and pairs with a 201bhp electric motor at the rear axle. They bond via a highly adaptable four-wheel-drive system - the electric motor can actually send its power up front - with a 171mph top speed and 3.5-second 0-62mph time the end result.
Isn’t it wild that, on paper, the latter number is no longer especially shocking? But outside of the EV universe, its highly tuned engine revving aggressively against the ‘Race Start’ launch control system before you snap your foot from the brake pedal and slingshot into the distance, the truth is anything but. No one needs their SUV to go this quickly. On which note, its more sensible numbers are 37.7mpg and 170g/km of CO2.
I’m assuming there’s showstopping tech.
As per the C63, a whole thesis could be scripted on the GLC63’s technological prowess. An electrical turbocharger is a ‘direct derivative’ of AMG’s Formula 1 programme - probably a sharper brochure line when it was first patented, as opposed to when Max is polishing his third title in a row - while the electric motor is integrated with the limited-slip differential on the rear axle and can meter out power before the ESP grabs at the brakes, helping tidy up your ham-fistedness in a less nannying way.
As well as driving both axles, the car steers both too, to help tuck those 2.3 tonnes more neatly into corners. There’s also adjustable damping and - unlike the C63 - active anti-roll control. Performance SUVs are no stranger to such systems, and it’s perhaps the making of the GLC 63.
Helping decide how those systems coalesce are eight (!) different driving modes. Alongside those, you’ve three settings for the ESP and four levels of brake regen, not to mention a decision on whether the sports exhaust blares away and if you’ll shift through its nine-speed gearbox manually.
Which is best?
In truth, you end up with a deceptively simple choice between its Comfort and Sport+ modes, at least on the warm, dry Spanish roads upon which we’ve sampled the car. Comfort is essentially its hybrid mode, the engine dipping out of action at every realistic opportunity to let you slink through villages in near silence before vivaciously boosting out of them. It also makes motorway cruising a fairly cosseting experience.
Read More www.topgear.com/car-reviews/m...