HEAD TO HEAD SUPER SALOONS

This should just be your usual, regular, ultra fast, four door battle. But after what AMG has done to one of our very favourite speed machines, it's anything but. It's AMG C63 vs Alfa QF...

- OLLIE KEW

We had our first go in the new MercedesAMG C63 in December 2022. It's taken until midsummer '24 to meet it again, and the resulting information vacuum has been gleefully filled by the internet, awash with rumours that Mercedes is panicking. That not a single person in Germany has strolled into a Merc dealership and asked to buy the new 2.0-litre hybrid C63. The Chinese market cannot reconcile how the 4cyl C63 is superior to the cheaper 6cyl C43. Someone confidently asserted it's being quietly euthanised, while engineers desperately lube thump great V8s with Lurpak and attempt to shoehorn them beneath the C63's twin domed bonnet.

We're assured none of these things are true. The internet is officially wrong, nothing to see here. Apparently the C63 just needed some software updates, which were downloaded via dial-up. But would you be surprised to see the svelte CLE coupe (basically a two-door C-Class) offered with a V8 to appease the faithful before long? I wouldn't.

This is 2023's sorry, I mean 2024's most controversial car. It was always going to be tough to replace the old C63 - TG regulars should leaf back to 2017's issue 300, when the V8 coupe nuked the new Audi RS5, Lexus RCF and BMW's mighty M4. We called it "one of the very best cars on sale today". Replacing it with an engine half the size, inspired by one of the most lambasted hypercar launches in history? Baby and bathwater, binned.