It's common for race cars to have some connection—however small—with performance road cars. Usually this takes the form of "homologation specials," road cars built specifically to qualify a racing derivative for a particular series. The 2025 Mercedes-AMG C63 S E Performance , however, gets its racing connection not from racing rule makers but from the marketing department.
Mercedes has spent massive sums on Formula One and come away with groaning shelves of trophies. But those trophies don't pay shareholder dividends, and so the German automaker is trying imbue its latest AMG road cars with some F1 mystique—and technology—to drive the time-worn narrative of road-car relevance. The C63 S E Performance is a high-performance version of the C-Class sedan that packs a plug-in hybrid powertrain (shared with the GLC 63 S E Performance SUV ) which, like current F1 powertrains , features a small but power-dense gasoline engine that does most of the work, but with meaningful electric assist.
It's an impressive piece of engineering, and you can't help but notice how eager Mercedes is to prove its point. The outgoing C63 used a twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V8, and many customers would probably have been happy if that lovely-sounding engine continued in the new model.
But such things are no longer on trend. Technology and efficiency are the buzzwords of the day, and gas-guzzling V8s don't represent either. Instead, the new C63 downsizes to a 2.
0-liter turbocharged inline-four. It m.