Bow Down to the Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG Station Wagon
Sure it’s a station wagon. It’s also fast. Maybe even too fast.
For some people, there is no enticement imaginable that will convince them they need a station wagon. Give it ground effects, a massaging seat, Paul Newman’s pedigree. All that matters to a hater of station wagons is a simple fact: it’s a station wagon.
Now, I’m a lover of all cars, but I have a special place in my heart for station wagons. When I was a kid, I did some terrible things in the way back of my mother’s Chevy Caprice Estate. I rolled joints and I smoked them; I became acquainted with the fairer sex. When I was a little younger, I tried to toss my younger brother out of the rear window.
Photos Courtesy of Mercedes-Benz USA
However, none of that compares to the terrible things I want to do in the Mercedes-Benz E63AMG wagon. I know you’re wondering: a wagon? Yep. I know this is not a KoenniggseggAgera. It’s not a LaFerrari or a Porsche 918 Spyder. It’s not even a Bentley GT, good sir. It’s a station wagon—and one that costs more than $100,000. And yet it ignites something inside of me that almost no other car can. Maybe it’s the irrationality of its design: a station wagon, meant to convey soccer cleats and brown paper grocery bags. But it’s been blessed with a level of hedonism and savagery that would send a sane mother running for the nearest Toyota Sierra.
Photos Courtesy of Mercedes-Benz USA
The grille of the black-on-black S-trim package that I tested has unsettlingly sinister lines. The wheels are silver trim on black alloy. The engine is a ripsnortingbiturboV8 that displaces 5.5 liters and generates 577 horsepower. That’s more than a Ferrari 458 Italia. It’s a lot more than a Porsche 991 Carrera S. It’s more than many cars.
I’m not calling this a supercar, and it’s sort of unfair to compare it to the much lighter Carrera S. If someone were to garrote me and force me to choose between the E63AMG wagon and a 458 Italia, I don’t have to tell you I’d eventually choose the Ferrari. But on Willow Springs racetrack, in the desert way outside Los Angeles, instead of carting children to tuba practice, I unleashed my own inner child and outdid almost every fantasy I ever had in the back of my mom’s wagon.
Photos Courtesy of Mercedes-Benz USA
Photos by Mercedes-Benz USA
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