– Detroit, Michigan

This isn’t just a sporty, luxurious coupe, it’s a muscle car – and a freaking superb one, at that. This coupe constantly begs me to drive it faster and harder, a poof of tire smoke behind me accompanied by the lingering roar of one of the world’s finest eight-cylinder engines. The AMG C63 S Coupe does everything well – it looks fantastic and it will coddle you in what is, without question, one of the nicest interiors on the market today. Oh, and it goes like hell. And even that’s an understatement.

Pros

• Never have ratings of 503 horsepower and 516 pound-feet of torque felt so conservative. Power is always – always – available, and it comes on with a sort of force and immediacy you’d normally expect from a supercar. I can’t stress it enough: Mercedes-AMG’s biturbocharged 4.0-liter V8 is one of the best engines you can buy today, and its ferocity and urgency is fully apparent here in the C63.
• But it’s more than just a powerful engine in a luxury car. The C63 is tuned to be a driver’s tool, with sharp reflexes and a level of car-to-driver symbiosis that will let you hang the tail out and get a little silly before reining you back in. Where the BMW M4 lacks feedback, the C63 gives you exactly as much as you want. This car never, ever leaves me cold.
• It’s a sharp coupe, with great lines and a powerful stance. I like the wide, purposeful front fascia treatment on the AMG C63, and while I hate this rear spoiler on the Cabriolet, it nicely accents the hardtop’s rump. Even here with the carbon fiber exterior treatment and blacked-out elements, the C63 wouldn’t look out of place in the valet line or cruising the streets of Beverly Hills. Simply put, a pro fighter that looks great in a three-piece suit.
• The interior is one of the best in the business, and I love the red/black/aluminum look of this car. Every version of the C-Class offers S-Class-levels of luxury, with tons of style and tech, and the AMG only adds to that with model-specific branding and color treatments. You can easily while away the hours in here, comfily nestled behind the C63’s thick, AMG-specific steering wheel.
  
  

Cons

• After choosing my own drive settings in the Individual mode of Dynamic Select, I have to re-select this mode every single time I get in the car. It always defaults to Comfort. What’s the point of having your own personalized setting if the car doesn’t remember it every time?
• Total nitpick: The color palette is too boring for such an exciting car. The Brilliant Blue seen here is lovely, but it’s the only semi-interesting color Mercedes offers. You can get a BMW M4 in cool colors like Yas Marina Blue or Austin Yellow, and the Jaguar F-Type comes in a huge array of interesting tones. Mercedes offers an array of blacks, whites, grays, and silvers, or this blue. That’s it.
• At $75,000, this is a lot of car for the money. This heavily optioned example, on the other hand, costs $102,435, which feels like a stretch, especially when a 650-hp Corvette Z06 starts around $80,000.
  
  

Competitors

• BMW M4
• Chevrolet Corvette Z06
• Ford Shelby GT350 Mustang
• Jaguar F-Type R
• Porsche 718 Cayman S

Photos: Steven Ewing / Motor1.com