Gimme a hammer!

If I had a hammer; I'd hammer in the morning. I'd hammer in the evening... Hands up those of you who recognise those words immortalised by Latin American crooner Trini Lopez...?

I remember them well as a little kid, travelling out in the country with my old man in his Alfa Giulia Super — they evoked a kind of a mystical image as they piped out of that Supersonic car radio as we rushed through the mielie fields and on to his next meeting. But those words took on a different meaning to me altogether when that still-independent tuning house AMG introduced a pimped V8-powered Mercedes-Benz 500E back in the late-'80. Man — a V8-powered mid-exec saloon?

Well in those days there simply wasn't such a thing and that AMG offering pioneered the big V8 powered midsized German saloon — kind of in response to BMW's M1-powered 24-valve inline-six first M5 — was quite something. And the term hammer was coined in response to AMG so well obeying that age-old American belief — 'there 'aint no substitute for cubic capacity' — if you had a 500E AMG, you certainly had yourself a hammer...

Yep, that power war was simmering even then...

Fast forward to the beginning of the New Millennium — to when BMW reinvented that same niche with its 400-horse V8 M5. What did Mercedes-Benz do in response? It bought out AMG and answered its Bavarian archrival by utilising its newly acquired Affalterbach tuning arm as a means to achieve a flagship for almost every model in its range — and in the case of the E, it built a thing called E55 AMG: a supercharged V8 that was as much a hammer as that first privateer effort by the then independent tuner...

E55 AMG was an awesome device. Huge low-end grunt, a growl from the bottom of its heart and — for the first time ever — a sub-five-second 0-100 sprint time for a mass produced saloon car. Meanwhile, VW's royal brand that'd been chasing and closing in on its two duelling compatriots, Audi wasn't about to be left in the shade and fired its RS6 salvo — a twin-turbo V8 all-wheel drive version of the A6 that was up to anything its peers could muster...

BMW went a step further

So BMW went a step further and without turbo or supercharging, reset the rulebook once again with what we have since considered the finest car in the world: the latest 5.0-litre V10 M5. And taking it to a new level with a normally-aspirated engine, BMW M kind of caught Merc and Audi with their pants down. See Munich made no bones of the fact that it beat the best without having to resort to force feeding its brilliant new power plant to achieve that...

Since then, Audi's RS6 disappeared with the arrival of the new A6 a few years ago, but although we have to wait a little more to see exactly what its V10-powered next RS6 will comprise of, Ingolstadt has kind of given us a bit of a clue with the brilliant RS4. Yes it's supposed to be junior league versus 5 and E, but this particular A4 certainly can hold its own in this company when it comes to performance, presence and panache — not to mention expectation — even though in terms of car, its basis is a class below. Still, the current super-entry exec king is good enough to bring here as Audi's substitute representative in this battle alongside our own example of the M5.

Pure brute force

But the black car in the pictures is Mercedes-Benz' normally-breathing return volley to both M5 and RS4. And the new E63 AMG is as such the son of the hammer — it relies on pure brute force to strut its stuff and take on the finest on the market. One of a glut of new 63 AMG models that have just started to populate the top of most of Merc's ranges, the 63s replace the erstwhile blown 55s and while we'd normally mourn the passing of such a mill, this time we celebrate its passing to make way for quite a brilliant piece of engineering.

And in typical Cars in Action style, we scrounged the very first E63 AMG we could find to bring you this exclusive first Reef road test of the beast — pitted directly against its fiercest rivals...

So then, starting with the Merc, what exactly is this E63 AMG? Well as you will see a couple of pages anon, Mercedes-Benz was faced with fast-closing environmental issues with its supercharged V8s. They simply could not meet forthcoming new Euro emissions legislation, while noise and other issues have consistently been a thorn is supercharged efficiency's side. Not to mention the well over 100kW those big blowers consumed to give them a relatively far smaller advantage in the end.

Still, with all that grunt at the bottom end, the supercharged engine was a revelation from idle right through the midrange. But beyond that, it died and faced with newfangled normally aspirated rivals of the same capacity that benefited the advantage of making even more power at close to twice the revs over and above a most impressive bottom end output, the 55 simply had nowhere to hide.

Enter the new 7000rpm 6.2-something-litre Merc AMG V8 that uses four-valve technology its flawed three-port predecessor always suffered without, and you have a more powerful but less torquey solution. Sounds like a compromise but it isn't? But the fast spinning 63 easily overcomes the twist losses through its ability to rev — and produce sufficient power from basement to penthouse, where the 55 relied on excess up to the middle of the building and had little to nothing to offer at the top, where everyone else was having fun...

Torque is key

Torque figures are the key to this element of the discussion. Take that the 55 made its best grunt at 2650rpm and the 63 twists strongest at 5200, and you will start to understand where the difference lies: a faster-spinning engine is always more efficient and while the E63 makes less torque; that it does so higher up the range; and that those same extra revs cause it to produce even more power in normally aspirated trim, are proof enough that Mercedes-Benz has seen the light that BMW (and more recently Audi) have achieved brilliance by using hugely efficient high-revving normally aspirated engines to win the war as it stood until now.

And looking at torque best quantifies why we can so well compare the three vehicles. Take a look at their varying specific torque figures: the 4.2-litre Audi makes 103Nm per litre, the 5.0-litre BMW 104 and the 6.2-litre Merc 102. Unlike in specific power, where the smaller Audi mill enjoys an almost linear benefit over its increasingly larger rivals thanks to natural mechanical friction and efficiency issues, the torque-to-capacity figures indicate a similar state of tune — and a well-matched trio of engines.