Ahh, high-performance wagons, the forbidden fruit for American car enthusiasts. Ask nearly any enthusiast to pick their dream daily driver and it will likely be a high-performance wagon with a manual transmission from any of the big German Three, either BMW, Audi or Mercedes-Benz. The reason for that is each company has, at least historically, made brilliant performance wagons. With BMW sort of losing sight of that idea in recent years, Audi and Mercedes-Benz have been carrying the wagon torch. Thankfully, at least one of these high-performance wagon is making it ‘Stateside — the Mercedes-AMG E63 Wagon and it made its North American debut at the 2017 NYIAS.
I’ll admit, I’ve been a bit critical of the new E-Class. It isn’t a bad looking car by any means but I find it to be incredibly boring looking. It looks like any other relatively premium sedan on the market. Slap Hyundai Genesis badges on it and no one would bat an eye. However, in AMG Wagon spec, I think it looks brilliant.
I’m genuinely o the belief that the new E-Class needs to be an AMG to look good and it looks best with a long roof. The more aggressively sculpted hood, angrier headlights and large air intakes give its face some much needed drama. I also really love the black wheels and orange “AMG” calipers, which look great on a family wagon.
Inside, the AMG E63 Wagon looks really quite nice. The standard E-Class cabin is great but it looks best in AMG-spec. While I still think the best steering wheel in the business is BMW’s new M Sport wheel, the alcantara and leather-wrapped AMG flat-bottomed wheel runs it damn close. It’s lovely to hold and thick in all the right places. Sort of like Sophia Vergara. Okay, going off the rails a bit, I’ll keep it G-rated. I still hate, hate, hate the fact that Mercedes-AMG uses a column shifter for its massively powerful cars. It makes selecting your gear feel like a Buick and that’s never a good thing. But the rest of the cabin is lovely. Although, I was a bit disappointed with the seats, as they’re good but not great.
If I were in the market for one of the premiere super sedans of the world, the BMW M5, Cadillac CTS-V and Mercedes-AMG E63, it’s be tough to not go AMG just for the wagon body style. While I actually like the new 5 Series more and would love to see what BMW has in store for the M5 and the CTS-V’s Corvette Z06 engine is insane, it’s hard to resist the idea of embarrassing Porsche 911 owners in a five-seater family wagon.
