I’ll be honest with you, when the Mercedes-AMG C63 came out, I was a bit worried for the 2015 M3. That’s because I knew that was going to be its main rival, and the specs said a sad story for the BMW.
However, as it was proven time and time again, power isn’t everything. Nowadays manufacturers are finally starting to figure out this universally true fact, and they adapt to it, on the go.
BMW was, thanks to its Motorsport division, at the spearhead of it all, once again. Maybe it was because of the failure that the F10 M5 and F12/F13 M6 models were, having received so much criticism for their weight or maybe it was simply in their DNA. We don’t know but what we do know is that the new M3 is definitely a light weight.
Sure, a lot of people will say that it’s still a ‘porker’, but those people aren’t realistic. The moment you decide to get that 16-speaker audio system for your car, you lose the right to complain about weight. The same goes for all the new tech we get and take for granted these days.
Getting back to the issue at hand here, the guys from CAR Magazine took the two for a short trip to see which they liked best. However, we’re not dealing with what would be the default deathmatch here.
That would’ve been the case if the BMW M3 were pitted against the regular Mercedes-AMG C63 model. However, what we have here is a battle between the BMW and the C63 S model.
In turn, that translates into the 431 HP Bimmer taking on a car that has 510 HP at its disposal. On the torque front, the 3-liter inline 6-cylinder biturbo engine from Munich is down some 150 Nm compared to the 4-liter twin-turbo V8 of the Swabian, making 700 Nm (516 lb-ft).
Things look desperate right? Well, chip in the ceramic brakes and only then you’re allowed to start losing your temper. Even so, there is one key element working for the BMW here. Remember what we talked about at the beginning?
The 200 extra kilos (440 lbs) that the Merc is carrying definitely show on the road and on the track, and that’s what gives the BMW the upper hand. Sure, on the drag strip the massive power difference works for the C63 AMG but on a circuit, things are going the other way around. Check out the video for even more details.
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