Mercedes CLK63 AMG (2006) CAR review

Another manic Merc? So how many squillion horsepower does this one have?

It's not the car that's important, more what's changed under the bonnet. This is our first taste of a road car powered by AMG's new naturally aspirated 6.3-litre V8. It's the company's first ever ground up engine (the others having all been based on existing Benz motors) and it'll find its way under the bonnet of almost every high performance Merc in the next couple of years as the old supercharged V8 is phased out.

Who said there was anything wrong with the old engine? It was hardly short on grunt was it?

True, there was nothing wrong with that engine's outright performance, only the manner in which it was delivered. The big flat torque curve made it easy to go fast, but it all felt and sounded a bit linear. And it wasn't very efficient: just running the supercharger sapped 100bhp. Stop worrying anyway, the project's been in safe hands of AMG's Powertrain Director, Bernd Ramler. His last job was designing the engine for the Porsche Carrera GT.