German Car Zone

Final words.

Indeed, both cars successfully balance hardcore horsepower with a tastefull palette of home comforts. As modern Teutonic interpretations of the classic American muscle car, they make the case. If what you crave in your four-door saloon, for instance, is colossal perfrormance delivered with the demeanour of an insouciant dragster, the C63 is almost certainly what you are looking for.

The depth of the M3's talent, however, is telling. For point-to-point pace it easily matches the Merc but, more than that, it feels special doing it - accurate, agile, finely balanced, biddable - where the Merc is merely accomplished. In short, the M3 saloon is sharper, cuts deeper and will keep you hooked for longer.

Bedford laptimes:
BMW M3: 1:26,2
Merc C63: 1:28,8

Source: Dr Dunkel

Long live the king .

Unconcerned, undisturbed; carefree and nonchalant

Hmmmm.....

M

I'd love to see a full article of this one...

In the words of an AMG engineer, the average driver could explore the upper limits of the C63 with ease and more safely than he could in a M3.

The M3's maximum performance plateau is very narrow and the average driver will find it very challenging to drive the M3 at the maximum for prolonged periods.

It's not that the C63's chassis is inferior to the M3, it's just that they have been tuned differently to the taste of their respective clientele.

That's true, but these are high performance cars, so if i owned one, i for sure wouldn't drive it 365 days just to go to work and back; twisty roads, highways, sometimes on the track too... I'd use and explore it to the maximum.

And in the end, if i'd need every day, comfortable car, an M3 would serve me good in that way too.

Looking at all the test videos and reviews we have seen I say it is the other way around with the C63 being the difficult car to handle at the limit and M3 being the more easily exploited. Of course it is normal the the AMG engineer thinks otherwise. And yes, the C63's chassis is inferior. AMG might or might not have deliberately made it that way, I have no clue but if it can't handle as well and is not as comfortable - that makes it inferior.

Scathing.....

M

Truth sometimes is....

But I don't for a sec mean to imply C63 is a bad car or does not handle well. It is all relative I guess..

The AMG engineer made an example with the handling and grip of the two cars. The C63 is tuned to have a high level of grip and is designed to "let go" gradually even with the ASR switched to 'OFF' so the driver can drift a little (or a lot) and can control the drift with the throttle and catch it quite easily. Go to Youtube and you'll see countless videos with the C63 drifting like the tyres don't cost a cent.

The M3 on the other hand, is designed for maximum adhesion (grip) and even professional drivers find the M3 difficult to drift and once the threshold is breached and it let's go, it really let's go.

One point the AMG engineer did concede is that they need to work on the suspensions to give the C63 better ride comfort and they may improve the level of grip. It's not easy to achieve when you have an angry 6.2L V8 engine under the bonnet.