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Mercedes-Benz’s four-door coupe gets the AMG treatment. Fireworks expectedly result

By Nick Syn

FIRST OFF, SAYING that the Mercedes-Benz CLS 55 AMG is a fast car is like saying that Moses Lim is fat. In other words, redundant. Imagine giving New Zealand All-Black Jonah Lomu enough room to build up a full head of steam, and then getting him to aim a full-blooded tackle at your kidneys, this might give you some idea of what it’s like to stomp on the loud pedal in the CLS 55.

It’s an amalgamation of all the best bits from classic Saturday morning cartoons, the automotive equivalent of the scene changes in Superfriends. It is, unequivocally, “meanwhile in the Hall of Justice” fast. Full bore acceleration away from the traffic lights essentially involves a loud explosion, which results in you finding yourself instantaneously transported to the next set of lights, wondering why your neck aches and with no memory of how you got there.

The latest donor vehicle to accept AMG’s weapons-grade supercharged 5.5-litre V8 engine is the CLS, Mercedes’ stylish four-door coupe. AMG, Mercedes’ sporting arm, makes it a point to design subtle bodykits that tastefully enhance a car’s looks, but the job it did on the CLS goes a fair bit further. The end result is nothing short of steroidal, in fact, and the car comes off as far more aggressive-looking than other ‘55’ models. Vast 19-inch, five-spoke AMG alloys barely shroud enormous drilled brake discs and oversized callipers. And at the rear, four exhaust outlets, each large enough to swallow a Fuji apple, make for a pretty clear statement of intent.

AMG doesn’t just shoehorn a big engine into an ordinary, off-the-rack CLS bodyshell, careful tuning of the suspension and drivetrain is also carried out. For instance, Mercedes’ revolutionary seven-speed automatic gearbox would report sick if faced with the prospect of trying to channel all of the supercharged V8’s monster torque, so AMG uses a beefier five-speed ‘box. The engine itself is commonly, and erroneously, thought to be basically the same unit as the three-valve per cylinder V8 that goes into Mercedes’ current ‘500’ models. It’s not, really. The AMG version has bigger internal water jackets for one thing, which means a wholly different engine block.