Now, everyone knows what an S63 is.
Its Mercedes' bigfoot or saloon car that will go a zillion miles an hour.
But very few people know about this car.
It's the S63 coupé and it's kind of forgotten
amongst the hordes of Porsche's and Lamborghini's and Bentley's
that operate in that price range.
But I'm telling you this might be one of the best cars on sale.
Of course, it's not cheap.
It's well over a £100,000 and with options.
I don't admit how much this one is, but it's the most beautiful product.
Everything in here is of the very best quality.
It's on a shortened S-Class chassis with air suspension
and their familiar five and a half litre twin turbocharged V8
which has been replaced by the four-litre twin turbocharged V8 from the E63.
It's confusing, I know.
What I'm saying, I don't know of a car that better combines speed and comfort
and I've driven every car that's supposed to do it.
So how has Mercedes made such a brilliant car
and failed to tell everyone about it?
Now, this is quite an old car. In fact, it feels like a used car now,
but the engine is the old-school twin turbocharged V8, 5.5 litres,
five hundred and eighty-five horsepower and 664 foot-pounds of torque.
It's a torque monster.
The gearbox is a bit slower than it now is
but this is the powertrain of choice for this type of car.
With the shorter wheelbase in an S-Class it's a much, much more agile machine.
I can't tell you how well-balanced it is between comfort and speed.
On UK roads this is the most impressive GT car I've ever driven.
I'll tell you what makes it so good.
It's just the level of comfort, quietness,
and general feeling of not actually being in a car.
But that demonstrates a big problem making car videos,
because there's no way of me saying, listen to how quiet it is.
Well, I'll do it now.
That's my "isn't it quiet face".
I'll now do my "ride comfort face".
I mean, the right comfort is freakish. I've never driven a car like it.
You see stuff, your eyes say, "Oh, that's a bump,"
and when you go over it, nothing happens.
You get a little noise like that and nothing happens.
The cumulative effect of that silence and that ride comfort is that
you get out after a 3-hour journey fresher than when you started.
That doesn't happen in an Audi A8, that doesn't happen in a BMW 7-series.
It only happens in this car.
And when you think about it,
when you're stressed and you've got lots to do,
that's an incredible trick.
But alongside the freakish levels of comfort and lack of fatigue,
this car it's riddled with toys.
In fact, there's so much fun to be had poking around the details of this car,
I'll going to have to stop and show you.
The S63 coupé is all about the details.
It's often accused of looking just like a slightly bigger C-Class or E-class coupé
but it doesn't. Look at these lights here.
Those are individual LEDs and above them are Swarovski crystals.
This thing reads the road ahead.
That's why it says LED intelligent light system.
You don't get that on a C-Class. No, you don't.
Come around the side here.
Now the next time you see one of these on the road,
and if you do, because they're quite rare,
look at that line down the side, this sort of suede.
It starts in front of the front wheel and it comes all the way back.
One line uninterrupted, all the way back...
to behind the rear wheel.
It gives this lovely tension down the side of the car.
I think it's fantastic.
It doesn't have swollen arches, but it still looks really wide and punchy.
The boot lid has this dock tail here that's built into the metalwork
and that does acts as a spoiler and produces, well, reduces lift.
What I love, is this extra crease here.
So the line follows off the boot lid,
and the rear panel here, this rear quarter-panel,
just has this little hint of a crease here just to taper that line in.
It's that level of detail that I find fascinating about this car
because people think it's just a big Mercedes coupé, it isn't.
It's totally separate to all the rest of the range.
That's why the little elements in the rear heated screen
are so small they're invisible. They're not on a normal Mercedes.
This is a reminder of the fact
that Mercedes-Benz has always been a maker of the finest cars in the world.
And they can be quite expensive.
Now any great luxury car cabin should be full of toys and things to play with
and this is one of the best.
I think of all the features I've enjoyed during 17,000 miles with this car,
this is my favourite.
The driver can control the passenger seat.
Effectively it's like being in a DB5 and pretending you're James Bond.
So you press left
and you can just move your passenger backwards, forwards, up, down.
Look, I'll just say to the ceiling.
Now, if you've got little people, children,
there's nothing better than winding them up
by just sending them up and down and around.
You can also control their heated seats and you control their Airscarf.
This thing has the fan heater that comes into your neck like it does in an SL.
So, effectively, you can warm and cool the other person in the car in the front
as much as you like.
I love that. It's totally unnecessary, but it's just great, great theatre.
The seats themselves, well, they couldn't be better
Let's move that out the way of the camera. Sorry about that Chris. I'll move that.
Just demonstrating again the brilliance of the S-Class coupé.
The seat itself is so adjustable,
I'll leave it Neil to show you what happens on the screen,
but you can have everything
from active bolsters, passive bolsters, move everything in and out,
up, down, around about. It is truly remarkable.
If you can't get comfortable in this car you can't get comfortable in any car.
The only problem is if you're a short ass like me,
by the time you find the right driving position
some of the dials become obscured,
in fact, pretty much cut off by the top of the steering wheel,
but that doesn't matter as there's a Head-Up Display
I can read on the screen, so that's fine. I'll just use the HUD.
There are two main screens here, like there is in an S-Class.
I can't really fault the level of information.
It is clear, precise, not too fancy,
but just enough theatre to make me feel I'm in something very expensive.
The leather, look at the leather.
This baseball glove, thick designo brown leather, is fantastic.
Other details I love.
The Swarovski crystals, almost had Swarovski right, I won't try it again.
There's one here, okay.
There's a crystal that sits on your cubby when you open it,
which I find...
Well, it's a bit naff really, isn't it? I'm not that into crystals.
The centre armrest here is brilliant.
This is classic Mercedes-Benz brilliance because it opens both sides...
But it does so the same way.
How's that even possible when there's no visible hinge?
I still-- I mean, what... That's snake-oil, isn't it?
It's incredible!
These open here to give you a cup holder.
The other thing I love is you fold that down and it's where you get your CD,
but it does mean you can't drink a drink and take a CD out at the same time,
which is an enormous failure from Mercedes-Benz
and I hope they look at that for the facelift.
What else have we got.
All your buttons down here for your chassis controls,
for your gearbox to be sport, manual or comfort,
but most important of all, is a little sign here on the tweeter.
All the speaker covers are metal.
There's one there for the surround sound, and a few around here.
The Burmesta hi-fi in this thing is the best hi-fi I've ever heard in a car.
There are subs down in the foot wells
and then the top end comes sort of seamlessly out above the scuttle.
It sounds incredible.
It's such a compromised environment
and I know that there are companies like Naim, that I love, for home hi-fi,
making hi-fi's for other car manufacturers and making lots of noise about it.
Mercedes doesn't make any noise, any PR noise,
about the hi-fi in this car at all.
but it is, unquestionably, the best I've ever heard in a car.
So, the combination of silence, ride comfort,
and sitting like you're in a live music auditorium,
makes for the most compelling long-distance vehicle I've ever been in.
There's room for two little people in the back,
I wouldn't say it's a genuine full four-seater
which is remarkable given it casts a shadow of a 5-Series a bit more,
but if you have the seats further forward
you can get two grown-ups in the back, but not really long ones,
and not a long journey with them.
The boot's a decent size and the rear seats are heated as well.
Bum warmers are critical, I think.
As you can tell, I'm a bit enthusiastic about it. I love it.
I've lived with this for a long time and it's amazing.
Anyhow, enough of the static review, let's head back out onto the road.
The next S63 coupé trick is size shrinking.
This thing is a big, big, heavy old boat,
but once you start threading it down a road
you wouldn't believe how small it can feel.
It never feels as small as a 3-Series,
but you can really pound it down a road
and, of course, that air suspension, its compliance helps you
when the surface gets choppy. Mid-corner bumps, not a problem.
You just keep pushing, it keeps building speed.
And you can actually enjoy driving it fast.
I mean that. You really can.
In fact, it's so good to drive fast, you can even do this with it.
There's something so naughty about big fast cars
being driven in a city fashion.
Let me just be quiet for a minute
and let you watch a well-over two-ton Mercedes-Benz
sliding around a wet circuit somewhere in Wales.
But to me, it just looks magnificent.
It's just the best car no one's ever heard of.
I like doing this.
I've just completely **** the rear tyres.