Mercedes Benz CLK AMG

Mercedes Benz CLK AMG

Here's a car that's hard to think about in rational terms after spending 100 miles in the pilot's seat. You drive a CLK55 AMG around (windows all down unless it's raining, because it just looks so cool with no B-pillars), whipping its 362 horses to a shiny lather and bending its taut but supple chassis hard into every conceivable ess and kink in the road, and you emerge thinking: What're the child slavers paying for a firstborn these days? I must have this car! Then you glance at the eye-watering $82,025 sticker price, and suddenly a lifetime of tardy Father's and Mother's Day cards seems the better deal.

Ah, but the rational cars at your tony tristar dealer don't wear the AMG badge. These cars are different. Brutal. Special—only 1500 CLK55s will be sold here this year. Their engines are hand-built (we built one for a story last March: "Yes, They're Hand-Built," page 59). Their performance is holistically upgraded from lesser CLKs-engine, transmission, suspension, brakes, wheels, tires-and the results are spectacular.

Introduced late in the 2003 model year, this CLK55 AMG is powered by the same 5.4-liter naturally aspirated V-8 that motivated its predecessor, tuned for 20 more horses (freer breathing brings the total to 362), with torque holding at 376 pound-feet. The reinforced five-speed automatic features AMG's Speedshift programming. Sport and comfort modes adapt shift points and firmness to differing driving styles, or press a button for manumatic mode, and the driver can control shifts via the lever or via buttons on the back of the steering wheel. In this mode it remains more manual than most Benzes, upshifting to prevent over-revving but never downshifting at wide-open throttle.

Underneath, AMG shocks, springs, and anti-roll bars lock down the body and quicken response rates without punishing the passengers. In a nod to ride plushness, the rubber is modest: 225/45 fronts and 245/45 rears on 17-inch rims (oddly enough, wider tires are available on the base CLK Sport package). Big 13.6-inch-front and 11.8-inch-rear brake rotors are grasped by four-piston-front and two-piston-rear monoblock calipers.

All this hi-po hardware shoulders a hefty load. Our option-laden example burdened the scales at 3808 pounds. That's 414 pounds up on the CLK's most obvious competitor, the 333-hp BMW M3 (which costs between $48,195 and $60,780). The six-speed manual M3 is geared way shorter than is the automatic CLK, and it revs 1500 rpm higher (to 8000), so both cars shift at nearly the same speeds, leading one to favor the M3 in a drag race. But the CLK's V-8 out-torques the M3's six by 114 pound-feet, and this pulls the CLK ahead of the last M3 we tested by 0.1 second to 60 mph (4.7 seconds) and by 0.4 and 2 mph through the quarter-mile (13.2 at 107 mph). Of course, if you're willing to close the M3-to-CLK55 price gap by $17,798, aftermarket tuner Steve Dinan can close the performance gap (see page 112). It's also worth noting that the new CLK55 runs 0.2 to 0.3 second quicker than its 288-pound-lighter predecessor.

That acceleration is accompanied by a glorious baritone engine note—you know, somewhere maybe a third of the way up the scale between a bass Chevy big-block and a soprano Ferrari 360. The chassis behaves beautifully, too, providing good isolation from small impacts while cleaving tightly to the road over dips and humps. The new rack-and-pinion steering even tickles the fingertips with a reasonably detailed accounting of what's happening down at the contact patches (although the feel remains a touch numb just off-center). The brake pedal feels firm and reassuring, even after repeated overuse. Trouble is, with all this mass and those relatively small tires (the BMW wears 18s with 255/40s in the rear), the handling limits are modest: a sensible-shoes 0.80 g and a ho-hum 173 feet to stop from 70 mph (the M3 manages 0.87 g and 161 feet).