Customers agreed with us that M177 V8 was taken too soon
Fans of the egg-faced volte-face will be smirking into their coffee mugs this week at the news that Mercedes-AMG’s incoming CLE 63 coupé is to get not four, not six but eight cylinders (see p10). What’s more, when the current C63 saloon and estate come in for their mid-life refresh next year, they too will become available with AMG’s new mild-hybrid V8 set-up.
This was never the plan. Mercedes wanted – and I use that word loosely – the 2.0-litre four-pot M139 to succeed the C63’s 4.0-litre V8 M177 full stop and threw in punchy electrical assistance to sweeten the deal. The diddy M139 would be marketed on the might of its world-beating specific output and its Formula 1 technology.
In fairness, from a purely logical standpoint, this wasn’t an insane idea. The M139’s specific output in the current C63 is 236bhp per litre. It’s a snort-inducing stat that in years gone by was attainable only if you left an RB26DETT unattended in a tobacco-perfumed workshop in Chiba Prefecture. It’s an awesome feat of engineering in a road car with Apple CarPlay and a big boot that will tolerate both freezing starts in Siberia and being ragged senseless in bitumen-melting heat on a Saudi expressway.