Simply Abu Dhabi Magazine XXIII

2 6 5 S I M P LY A B U DH A B I Despite its 2110kg mass, the S 63 AMG soaked up bumps at speed with remarkable grace and perfect poise – not kidney belt tight but not loose enough to bottom out either. Its torque curve is such that overtaking situations presented themselves far more frequently with a quick flick back of one or two of the AMG box’s seven-speeds, and then it might as well have bent time with the speed it rocketed past the slower moving traffic. On paper, Mercedes claims it gets from zero to 100 km/h in 3.9 seconds which is half a second faster than the twin-turbo, 12-cylinder Bentley Continental GT Speed, and tops out at a governed 250 km/h. It’s no sports car, but it covered masses of ground in next to no time. What seemed like just a few minutes of fun later was actually about two hours and several hundred kilometres covered without so much as a bead of sweat raised from either the athletic pace of the drive or the sun on my head, thanks to the cooled seats and chilled air pumped through the air curtain built into the headrest. As I turned into the hotel, the cars were parked and right in front, sitting as pride of place straight from the Mercedes Museum, was a stunning W111-series convertible in the exact same bottle green with tan leather. Doris Day, Princess Grace, take a bow.