If a Gulfstream GV won’t fit in your garage, try this.


Personal transportation doesn’t get any quicker, more prestigious, or more decadent than in a Gulfstream G-series aircraft. Intimate, fast, and opulent, these airborne masterpieces shuttle the world’s rich and famous—and their nannies, personal assistants, and Pilates instructors—across the country and around the world in million-dollar style. But eventually, even rich people gotta land. And Mercedes-Benz has just the thing to make ground-bound transportation just as fabulous (and nearly as fast): the 2008 CL65 AMG.

Familiar Face, Familiar Engine, Fantastic Combination

Of course, this car is familiar to us. We saw its debut recently at the New York auto show, and there was a CL65 AMG built on the previous body style with the exact same engine. So we approached our first drive opportunity with our mouths already foaming.

The CL65 AMG is set apart from the standard-fare CL550 coupe with an AMG Sport package—go figure—with a rear diffuser and quad exhaust pipes, vertical hash-style vents on the sides (that are becoming ubiquitous across AMG’s 18-vehicle lineup), and lightweight, twin-spoke, 20-inch wheels enveloped by 255/35ZR-20 tires up front and wide 275/35ZR-20s in back. Ask nicely (and cough up a little extra), and the rear-diffuser vanes can be rendered in carbon fiber for that oh-so-techie look. That’s it.

Intimacy and Opulence Combined

Like every other CL-, SL-, or S-class, the CL65 AMG has all the accouterments of any high-end home, sound studio, or massage parlor—all wrapped in a smaller package. Indeed, the CL65 AMG’s interior wraps closely around its occupants, a sensation that is only amplified when equipped with the black Alcantara-lined ceiling. The two rear seats are none too spacious but will hold adults in reasonable comfort for a sensibly short amount of time.

In terms of interior features, the 65 comes standard with pretty much everything Mercedes makes, including its fabulous Drive Dynamic seats, which, in addition to massaging your back, heating or cooling your bum, and adjusting to fit pretty much any body shape, are capable of actively inflating the side bolsters to hold you steady in turns. Some on our staff don’t particularly care for this, but they must admit it comes in quite handy when tossing the CL65’s nearly 5000 pounds to and fro. And the CL65’ s seats are covered from top to bottom in some of Mercedes’ finest leather, as is pretty much everything else that’s not rendered in metal, wood, or optional carbon fiber.

Cont...

Two Handfuls in the Twisties

The CL65 AMG isn’t all about acceleration, though. It can turn as well. The steering wheel moves with a fluid precision, but at no point do you forget that this is a huge, heavy car. Every road is narrow in a car this big. Sure, the composite, cross-drilled brake discs with twin sliding calipers in front and fat fixed clamps out back are reassuring, but the view over the broad, featureless hood doesn’t help one get his bearings terribly well, making “coloring between the lines” all but impossible. Thus, on our preview drive through the mountains of Southern California, we never turned off the ESP (which has been reprogrammed by AMG) for fear that even the most modest of slides would send some part of us into oncoming lanes, a tree, or a craggy rock. We’ll save such shenanigans for a more controlled testing environment, thank you.

Even with the nanny on, however, we could appreciate the heroic body control managed by the revised suspension, which includes the CL’s standard active body control enhanced with special AMG struts with firmer (but never harsh) damping. And when our path straightened out, the experience became as serene as befits a premium Mercedes product, with a magic-carpet ride quality and an engine note that deferred to the Wagner playing over the DVD-Audio system.

A Complete Package

Clearly, then, the CL65 AMG isn’t all about drag racing or handling or any of that. It’s about providing a brand of utter transportational paradise that few other cars offer, the kind that mere mortals seldom experience yet the kind that, say, owners of private jets expect (and with a price of about $200,000, it had better be special). The CL65 AMG is not just an engine with a car wrapped around it; it’s a car with an engine that does it justice.

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IMO, the best combination of power and luxury you can buy in a GT car and it ain't bad looking either, far from it actually.

M

Very desirable.

words cant describe this car

Wow. Fantastic pictures of a fantastic car

Beautiful.

I find it funny that Car and Driver wanted to turn off the ESP and then decided against it. They drive every car like they're on the track or something.

Surely the world's best ever coupe

Seems like they liked it!

I do wonder though how much faster this would be when compared to the CL63 on the road, wouldn't be much, and considering it costs a third more personally I wouldn't spend the extra.

That interior looks very luxurious, didn't know MB did the seats Bentley style!

The CL65's V12 will be purely for crusing around town, it definitely won't be able to match up to the AMG V8 in terms of sheer sporting performance. Straight runs and 0-100 sprints, maybe, but the responsiveness of the V8 would be better for twisties.

It's a Designo interior I think. I agree it looks very luxurious.

Well surely that's where the CL600 comes in!

I know that people will buy the 65 for status, and having the best, I just think, especially environmentally speaking, there are better engines, which still have huge amounts of power!

The CL65 is more for status than anything else.

A rather interesting insight - the CL600 is more expensive than the CL63. I always found myself rather surprised at this and then accepting it after reasoning it out.