Heavy Metal

The new Mercedes-AMG E 53 is no doubt a great looking luxury sedan, but the 435 horses raging under its shapely hood gives the car an added dimension

- Sameer Kumar

Extreme performance is nothing new for the Mercedes-Benz E-Class. Enthusiasts of a certain age still remember the legendary early-1990s 500E, which was actually assembled by Porsche at the latter’s plant in Zuffenhausen, in Germany. With its square-jawed Teutonic countenance and slab-sided bodywork, the 500E didn’t look hugely different from a regular W124-era E-Class, though its slightly wider, more muscular haunches did provide a hint of its ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ intent. With a 5.0-litre, 326bhp V8 under its hood, the 500E was a heavy hitter, capable of going from zero to 100kph in less than six seconds, and hitting a top speed of around 260kph. Clearly, a ‘family sedan’ fit for the Senna, Mansell, and Prost families then.

Thirty years on, the Mercedes-Benz recipe for high-performance four-door sedans is still spot-on. Take a regular E-Class sedan, shove an insanely powerful 6- or 8-cylinder AMG-built engine under the hood, upgrade the brakes and suspension so they can keep up with the engine and, these days, add a host of performance-focused electronics that not only help average drivers go faster, but also keep them out of trouble when ambition exceeds talent. And all this, without compromising on any of the luxury accoutrements that the E-Class is known for. Get it right — as Mercedes-Benz mostly does — and you have a high-performance luxury sedan that’s equally at home, crossing continents as it is burning rubber around a racetrack.