The Mercedes C55 seduces Paul Finlay with its muscular performance.   

Mercedes Benz is known for its ability to taunt the wealthy with beautifully built German engineering. 

Mercedes makes that drive to work just that much better, reminding you of just how hard you have worked.  You take your Mercedes in for its routine service and they hand you the keys to a loaner C55 AMG.  As soon as you turn the key you’re hooked. Sadly, this didn’t happen to me but I did get the chance to play in Mercedes’ pride of the fleet. 

Suiting up in the driver’s seat, you feel you have entered another world, a world in which the speedo in front of you reads 320km/h. With a turn of the magic wand the C55’s 24-valve, 5.4 litre 270kW V8 burbles to life. You sit for a moment taking it all in – the sound, feeling and taste you have to open it up.

Moving into the traffic is effortless; suddenly you are treated with respect. You put your indicator on and a space suddenly opens up before you. Out on the highway, the C55 just makes you brim with excitement. 

The C55’s sports seats are lovingly covered in the finest German cow, along with plenty of shiny bits in which to grab a vain look at yourself as a reminder that you’re in the driver’s seat of the C55. Your fingers start to wander, and while caressing the back of the wheel you find its sweet spot.

With a flick of the left hand the C55 jumps back a gear and the groan from the engine comes though. With just one more tease from the left hand its groan grows louder, begging you for more.

The silky-smooth V8 doesn’t feel brutal like an American muscle, but it is. Even while cruising, the deep, primal note is simply provoking. It’s relatively low-geared and busy, so acceleration is immediate and amazingly rapid.

Its excitement starts around 3000rpm, from which it responds instantly and spins in full, uninhibited glory to the 6600 rev limiter. The zero to 100km/h is a heart beat of 5.7 seconds.

With such a big V8 up front, the C55 feels rather nose heavy and suffers from some understeer, though the all alloy engine only weighs in at 172 kg. 
The suspension is simply superb, delivering faultless body control to handle the rough stuff in its stride. Once you have mastered the simple driving time, its time to turn the traction control off and see what mischief you can get up to.

The brakes are suitably powerful and progressive at speed, though in the first part of braking the C55 has an initial sponginess. Once off the brakes, the C55 comes to life allowing you to excite the rear end out into wonderful power slides with grace and ease. 

The C55 AMG is certainly the best sports sedan I’ve driven. It has amazing dynamics, which deliver precise and balanced excitement. That V8 provides outrageous performance and an exhausting soundtrack only an AMG can produce.

The C55 is amazingly easy to live with, luxuriously comfortable with sports performance and great value. A true classic, it will go down in automotive history as one of the best Mercedes every built. They are already becoming rare, but look out, there is a new beast heading our way – the new, more muscular C63 AMG.

Paul Finlay is the principal instructor at In Car Education (www.incareducation.com.au ).