Mercedes C63 AMG Estate (2009) CAR review

And what of that extra versatility?

Well, the estate doesn’t look as good as the saloon, and we’re not quite convinced by the extra versatility. The stats say the estate boasts an extra 10 litres of space (485 plays the saloon’s 475 litres) with the rear seats in position, but we tripped it up with a real-world comparison, the Barry family BMW E46 3-series estate swallowing a baby pushchair with less fuss. The C63 just doesn’t seem as accommodating as you might expect, though dropping the rear seats does, of course, open up far more furniture-shaped possibilities.

There was also a further black mark during the C63’s time with us: we opened the boot one rainy day, removed our belongings, then pressed the handy electronic button to close it. Except it didn’t work. Cue a wet load bay, a wet CAR team (everyone crowded round thinking they’d know the solution) and a very windy journey home for the Mercedes delivery driver.

A private car would, of course, have been fixed under warranty, but we were lucky that ours failed in the work car park, and not at the airport/train station/dodgy city street.

Verdict

Essentially, the greatness of the C63 lives on in the estate version. But you’ll have to really need the extra space that’s available by dropping the rear seats and unleashing the full 1500-litre load capacity to put up with the slightly uglier styling, 65kg weight penalty and £1200 price premium. With the seats in place there’s just not the practical advantage we expected. The failure of our electric-closing tailgate – a standard feature – is also a concern, though we’d imagine this was a rare glitch.

So let’s presume that fault was a one-off. And maybe you do need the 1500 litres, and maybe the tailgate will be attractive for outdoors types with mountain bikes to lug around. If that’s you, great. But we’ll imagine the vast majority of customers will be better served by the saloon for the vast majority of the time.

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