it's the sound that gets you. You can't get it out of your head, not even after a 13-hour flight home. It's part muscle car, part DTM racer, part atomic reaction. It growls, pops, and bangs in rhythm with a car that's traveling far too quickly on a twisty ribbon of road somewhere in the south of France. It's the sound the 2013 Mercedes-Benz SL63 AMG makes when driven hard, and it leaves an indelible impression.
With the SL63, AMG has attempted to rectify the primary complaint we have about the new SL550: it's not much of a driver's car. Don't get us wrong, we love the sixth-generation SL's silky-smooth drivetrain, effortless rush of torque, and luxurious leather-trimmed cabin. It's just that the SL doesn't really grab the little car-crazy kid inside most of us -- it's a fairly emotionless car that's at its best racking up miles on the interstate in calm, collected comfort or cruising, top-down, through your city's Main Street on a Saturday night on your way to dinner. Get the SL550 on a snaking backroad and you'll find there's nothing about the experience that grabs you.
While that's fine for most SL buyers, the rest of us have the SL63 AMG. With 530 hp and 590 lb-ft of torque available from its 5.5-liter, twin-turbocharged V-8 (codenamed M 157), the SL63 is a Learjet for the road. If that's not enough (keep in mind the standard SL550 has "just" 429 hp and 516 lb-ft), there's an optional performance package that raises top speed to 186 mph and output to a huge 557 hp and 664 lb-ft. With the base SL63 turning in a 3.9-sec 0-to-60 mph run, according to Mercedes, you'll have to ask yourself whether you really need more power.
Mercedes has paired its Speedshift MCT seven-speed gearbox to the new SL63 AMG, a unit that borrows heavily from the standard seven-speed automatic, but replaces the torque converter with a wet clutch unit for more immediate response. Other revisions are larger brakes, many aluminum suspension components, a carbon fiber trunklid, and a retuned ABC (Active Body Control) damping system. Inside the cabin, the SL63 gets a sport steering wheel and a standard Harman-Kardon stereo system, leather upholstery that is exclusive to the AMG version, and even an IWC clock on the dash that's inspired by the watchmaker's classic Ingenieur timepiece. Compared to last year's SL63 AMG, the 2013 version is roughly 276-lbs lighter, but boasts improvements of 2 percent more horsepower and 27 percent more torque. At the same time, AMG says the car is 30-percent more efficient than the outgoing version.
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