By Ever taken a ride with the devil? How about taking the devil's ride?
I borrowed Beelzebub's own chariot recently, the Mercedes' S65 AMG coupe. This is perhaps the most depraved car on the road today. I absolutely frickin' loved it.
I'm only sorta kidding. If Lucifer truly runs about on this mortal earth, he's doing it in the S65 Coupe. AMG may be housed in Affalterbach, Germany, but I'm fairly sure it was conceived in halls of brimstone by a sulfur-breathing engineering team. The goal? The spiritual corruption of its owners. Call it Hell's Honey Trap.
AMG models are now branded Mercedes-AMG rather than Mercedes-Benz AMG, a subtle promotion that illustrates the division's importance to the brand's overall reputation and bottom line. If the GT S sports coupe shows the direction of the division's future—creating a sports car from the ground up (and the GT is a fabulous car indeed)—then the S-Class AMG Coupes are the most primal examples of the old-school AMG. Take a pre-existing model, re-engineer and re-energize it, and then blast it full of crazy juice, courtesy of a handbuilt powerplant.
The S65 Coupe is the ultimate expression of that retread madness, and as I came to find out, it is also a neat encapsulation of all seven deadly sins:
1: Avarice can be described as an excessive pursuit of material possessions. The S65 is excessive in every single way. As if the S-Class sedan isn't heady enough, the buyer of the coupe banishes the most practical aspect—the rear two doors—forcing backseat riders to sidle past the front buckets like second class citizens. It's all about the driver.
And forget the proletarian S550 model. Forget even the "regular" AMG model, the $163,000 S63. This owner insists on the twin-turbo, 6.0-liter V-12, with an entry price of more than $230,000. My test car came to $247,875.
2. Envy. Oh, hell yes. I spent a week in the S65 spiriting around that Gomorrah that is Southern California, a place teaming with cool cars. Even here, a S65 Coupe is a rarity. It was only fitting that my car was all-black everything, including rims. All those covetous looks from drivers in lowly Infiniti crossovers and Porsche Panameras and my heart couldn't help but swell with . . .
3. . . . pride. Oh, but the S65 is a terrible beauty. Designers have taken the sedan and refashioned it into something infinitely cooler, shearing down its 206.5 inch-long body to 198.6 inches and refashioning the roof so that it is two inches lower. The fascia is masterful, with brightwork outlining the otherwise darkened grille and intakes. What it loses in doors, it gains in menacing presence.
4. Wrath. That engine. Let's talk about it. The decision to take the V12 over the ox-powerful, 5.5-liter twin-turbo V8 is a bit of fiscal insanity. Those extra cylinders are basically a $70,000 option, though it gives 621 horsepower and 738 pound-feet of torque over the S63's 577 hp and 664 lb-ft of torque. The twin turbo and V12 combo lend a particular kind of unassailable power.
On a blistering blast through the western bit of the Sonoran Desert, the car proved itself all too happy at steady speeds. But the engine's true mandate showed itself when I drove out of the desert basin and into the nearby mountains. (There's a community called Hellhole Palms, which made a nice destination.) The engine's pull is simply inexhaustible. It gobbles up other slower cars (and they're all slower) and missiles up steepest grades, ever hungrier, ever ravenous, ever vengeful. And the sound from the engine under full assault? Wagnerian.
5. Gluttony? Should we talk about gas mileage? No, let's just not.
6. In this case, sloth is best equated with the S65's level of comfort and luxuries. After all, beneath all that drama, it's still an S-Class, the global executive's ride of choice. There are the massaging seats, the air atomizer, the refrigerator in the rear seats. Don't care to drive? Engage the semi-autonomous settings, and keep one lazy hand on the steering wheel and half an eye on the road while the S65 keeps you moving along, stop-and-go traffic and all.
7. Lust is an uncontrollable passion or longing. Which is a fair description of my feelings for the car. I spent a week with the S65, and I'd love to claim that I exited it with my soul imperiled yet intact. But this is AMG at its most tantalizing, and without even knowing it, I'd actually signed my pact with the devil as soon as I slipped behind the wheel.
(Jason Harper, a contributing editor to Road & Track, has tested and written on cars for two decades. His scariest drive was a rally race in an original Lancia 037, his first drive of a supercar was the Porsche Carrera GT, and the only time he's gotten a speeding ticket was in a base Mini Cooper. His column, Harper's Bizarre, runs every Wednesday.)
