First Drive: Does the Mercedes-AMG E53 trade plug-in hybrid power for personality?

What is it?

Performance car manufacturers have a greater balancing act to play than ever. On the one hand, you’ve got electrification bringing the potential for once hypercar levels of performance to come to ‘regular’ cars, but then you’ve also got purists who still want the sound and feel of a traditional engine. It’s a tough recipe to crack.

Mercedes-AMG thinks the plug-in hybrid setup in this car – the new E53 – could be the answer. Bringing together petrol and electric power, it might be a ‘best of both worlds’ situation, and we’ve been behind the wheel to find out.

What’s new?

You might remember the E53’s predecessor, the snarling E63. With a 4.0-litre twin-turbocharged V8 engine under the bonnet, it was a true representation of AMG’s brutish approach to cars, yet it still brought sharpness and a direct feel to go with that near muscle-car character. From the get-go, it feels that the E53 is a different kettle of fish.

It’s a transition that AMG has tried with the recent C63, too, ditching that car’s 4.0-litre V8 in favour of a four-cylinder 2.0-litre turbocharged petrol with plug-in hybrid assistance.

What’s under the bonnet?

Blending together underneath the E53 is a 3.0-litre turbocharged straight-six petrol engine and an electric motor with a 21.2kWh battery. Combined – and with the optional £7,500 Pro Performance Package with its Race programme – you get 603bhp and 750Nm of torque, as well as a 3.7-second 0-60mph time and a top speed of 163mph. On paper, it’s all impressive stuff.

But you also get an electric range of up to 57 miles, usable at speeds of up to 87mph, while CO2 emissions are incredibly low at just 23g/km. Mercedes claims you’ll get up to 282.5mpg, too, but realistically you’d have to be doing all of your driving on pure electric power in order to achieve this.

What’s it like to drive?

In day-to-day driving, the E53 feels very well attuned to its surroundings. For most of the time, you waft along silently and, because you can charge at speeds of up to 60kW, you can top the battery up in no time should you need to. The ride quality is about right, but it does err on the firm side of things. Luckily, in Comfort mode, it does its best to take the edge off those bigger road imperfections.

Ask a little more of the E53 and that straight-six will spark into life. There’s a lot of piped-in sound, which is a shame as the 3.0-litre has a pleasantly old-school sound in its own right. There’s more than enough performance – available whenever you need it – and even with the batteries fully depleted, you never feel as if you’re caught short. There’s just a lovely smooth, old-school feeling to the way the E53 goes down the road; keep things unhurried and this has all the feel of a classic long-distance GT.

How does it look?

Mercedes-AMG has been on a hot streak when it comes to designing a car with the quietly menacing look of a Peaky Blinders character, and the E53 is no different. Our test car, in Night Edition Premium Plus specification, looked particularly undercover with its range of gloss-black elements.

Remember, you can get the E53 in both saloon and estate layouts – with our test car being the latter – and we’d argue that the ‘wagon’ looks the best of the two.

What’s it like inside?

There are few arguments to be had with the interior of the E53. The Premium Plus Night Edition package brings ‘multicontour massaging seats’ and they’re brilliantly supportive, providing just the right amount of bolster. Those in the rear of the car get plenty of space to stretch out, too. All cars get a 14.4-inch infotainment setup, though ‘our’ car also came with the impressive ‘Superscreen’ which, as a £1,495 extra, brings three separate screens which span the entire width of the dashboard.

You’d expect the Estate version to be effortlessly practical and while the 460-litre boot isn’t bad, it’s down by a huge 180 litres on the luggage area you’d find in the older E63, owing to the batteries being fitted in the rear of this new model. You’ll get even less – 370 litres in total – from the saloon, too.

What’s the spec like?

The E53 acts as the flagship for the entire E-Class range, which is why you’ll find that it has been fitted with every gadget and gizmo you could want. Standard features include a high-definition 360-degree parking camera, high-performance Digital Light LED headlights and a full panoramic sunroof, as well as an excellent Burmester surround sound system with 17 speakers. There’s even augmented reality technology for the satellite navigation, overlaying graphics onto footage being captured from the front camera.

It all comes at a cost – £109,745, to be exact, if you include our test car’s options – but in the overall landscape of modern performance cars, this price tag isn’t out of the ordinary.

Verdict

The Mercedes-AMG E53 is quite a difficult car to gauge. Naturally, the removal of the old car’s V8 engine means that a lot of character has been lost, but you could argue that with its impressive electric-only range and low CO2 emissions, more people will find this car a practical choice for day-to-day driving. The sheer downturn in boot space is more of an annoyance to this tester, in truth, as it diminishes the overall practicality of what is a very large estate car.

But boot space aside, the E53 might not have the swashbuckling nature of the car which came before it, but with its smooth, classic-feeling performance, we don’t think you’ll be left looking for more.