After accidentally leaking a preview on its home-market configuration website last week, Mercedes-Benz has officially unveiled its revised flagship luxo-muscle sedans, the S63 AMG and S65 AMG, at the 2009 Shanghai Motor Show today. Both are treated to the same updates given to the entire S-Class range, but these two big beasts pack one seriously mean punch.
Engines carry over largely unchanged from the outgoing models, which is good news because they're some of the most powerful units on the market. The S63 packs AMG's 6.2-liter V8 offering up 525 horsepower and 465 lb-ft of torque, while the top-of-the-line, have-to-have-the-best S65 AMG (above) features an enormous 6.0-liter twin-turbo V12 pumping out 612 horsepower and a gravity-altering 738 lb-ft of torque. That's a lot of power, but at nearly $200k, the $130k S63 seems like a relative bargain, especially when you consider that the bi-turbo V12 model only gains 0.2 seconds off the V8's 0-60 time.
Although the engines are ostensibly the same, they've been tweaked to improve fuel consumption and carbon emissions by about 3%. They're also both mated to a new Torque Vectoring system that brakes the inside rear wheel in a corner to assist handling, plus a crosswind compensation system. Visually the AMG sedans get a new chromed-up angular grille, LED daytime running lights in the air intakes, full LED tail-lights incorporating 52 LEDs apiece, and a redesigned rear bumper with an integrated diffuser, plus all the requisite special badging and wheels.
[Source: Mercedes-Benz, Autoblog Chinese]
