The 850 HP E63 by Weistec Engineering - /TUNED

TOM MORNINGSTAR: This is a Mercedes E-Class. And if you saw it on the street, you wouldn't give it a second look. Sure, in other places in the world, AMG marks aren't something you see every single day, but here in the land of cheap gas and low taxes, they are just how people get to work. Because community is just the sort of task that requires eight cylinders and two turbos. Everyone knows these cars are quick out of the box. But if you saw this E63 on the street, would you believe it makes as much horsepower as two Mustang GTs, three BMW 328s or Ford base model E250s? A Corvette ZR1, under perfect conditions, can do 180 in the standing mile. A Porsche Turbo S will run about 185. This car, with seating for five and a big trunk, can do over 190. [CAR ENGINE] MATT FARAH: When you think about driving in Southern California, you're not thinking about Orange County. You're thinking about Malibu. You're thinking about the Canyons. You're thinking about where car culture happens. Orange County is terrible. The best you can hope for is one of the toll roads. And I am prepared for that. The toll roads-- because everyone in Southern California is very cheap-- are always empty. And I'm driving the Weistec E63. A Weistec says this car makes 715 horsepower at the wheels, which is quite a bit more than the Renntech CLS we drove last season. And if that's true, some simple math will tell you that with a 15% drivetrain loss, that's nearly 850 horsepower at the crank. And all that, of course, is in a five-seat saloon car with massage seats and with all kinds of good, comfortable things. The E-Class is an interesting car. It's really the bread and butter of Mercedes. In some of the wealthier areas in the States, the E-Class is the bestselling car period. Where I'm from, in Greenwich, Connecticut, happens to be one of those places. And it has to be a little bit of everything for everybody. It has to be a somewhat frugal economy car, such as the diesel one I was able to drive from Mexico to Oregon on a single tank of fuel. And then it has to be kind of kind of bonkers like this Twin Turbo V8 AMG model, which comes from the factory with either 516 or 557 horsepower, depending on how you get it. So let's turn onto the toll road, and let's see what's 715 at the wheels feels like. I'm sure you guys would rather me drive with the windows up, so you can hear me better. But that's not an option, because as soon as we pulled away from Weistec shop, the air conditioning stopped working, which is exactly what you want in a $100,000 plus luxury sedan. Additionally, something has happened with the steering wheel and the shifter paddles don't work. Because Mercedes doesn't let you shift manually with the lever anymore, that means I don't have manual mode, which is exactly what I want. Here we go, coming in. [CAR ENGINE REVVING] MATT FARAH: Whoa. No burn-out, but ohhh, there's-- OK. [LAUGHS] The giggle-meter, however, is working just fine, perfectly calibrated. And this thing is making every bit of 715 horsepower at the wheels. -So this car has our complete package. It's got our inner cooler system, which consists of a heat exchange in the front that you can see here. It's got a trunk ice tank in the back of the car that you don't see. You can fill it with ice if you're going to the track, for example. It's got a complete exhaust system which consists of true down pipes and a complete mid-pipe that connects to the cat-back system. It's got our turbo upgrade which consists of a billet five-axis machine impeller, revised internals. And one of the cool things about this turbo kit is that it's a complete bolt-on. There's no hoses you have to add on or nothing like that. So there's no drama with it. At Weistec, we produce packages for all the N156 models of the platforms that carry that engine, so the C63, S, SL, CL, CLS, MLR, SLS, so on and so forth. We also have the N157 package that we produced parts for the E63, the CLS 63, ML and G. From there, we're now starting to do the 55, there's the N113 motor. MATT FARAH: Watching that speedometer, there's no live. I just went from 0 to 12 miles an hour at an incredible rate of speed. Absolutely incredible rate of speed. And, of course, because this car is so smart. It's displaying a cup of coffee. It thinks I'm tired, but that's because I'm wearing Dillon Optics sunglasses. I actually just drank a five-hour energy. Let's mat it again, and see how it feels from a roll. Here we go. [CAR ENGINE REVVING] MATT FARAH: Oh, there's six miles an hour, eight miles an hour. There's nine miles an hour, ten miles an hour, eleven. 12 miles an hour. That was 14 miles an hour. Unbelievable pace for this E63. Seatbelt tensioners work good. I'm not going to lie. The E63 doesn't really make a great track car. The tranny on downshifts, and obviously I'm in Auto here. But the other ones I've used and downshifts aren't the best. But they do make great standing mile cars. Amd I'll tell you why. Huge horsepower, limited slip dip, really quick upshifts, actually, especially with Weistec software. And the E-Class actually has one of the lowest drag coefficients of any car on the market today. It's only 0.26. That's part of the reason I was able to go 800 miles in the diesel one, part of the reason it makes a great standing mile drag car. High-speed acceleration, crazy in cars like this. -We like modifying a big V8. That's kind of comparing it to an LS motor, for example. A 6.2, for example, is making 500 wheel NA bolt-ons. You can't even get out of a seven-liter GM motor. It's quite amazing, actually. So that's kind of one of the reasons why we love that motor, and we started working on it. One of the things with these cars is that if you're driving factor stock, or if you're driving tuned, you notice they run out up top. That's one of the characteristics of its engine because the turbos are just so small, kind of chokes up up top. This car pulls all the way to red line, and even with four people in the car, you're going to feel your spine just kind of crushed in the back seat, because it's running at so much torque. This car puts down 715 on pumped gas. It's 91 octane in California. And it's put down almost 800 foot-pound of torque at the wheels. But if you turn the traction wheel off or put it on sport, this thing makes so much torque, that it just starts getting sideways for a second. Sometimes even third. [CAR ENGINE REVVING] MATT FARAH: Now, if you want to go drag racing, this particular car has something before that. When I used to race Mustangs back in the day, we used to have a cooler full of ice. And in between runs, we've cycled the engine coolant through that cooler. They actually have a built-in ice tank in the trunk. So if you want to drag racing, you can just be filling that up in between runs. And of course, that parallel is not by accident. These guys started by building Mustangs back in the day. They might not want me to tell you that, but there's no shame in raising Mustangs. The thing about these cars is the speed is just effortless. If my girlfriend wanted to go to the store, I would have no problem giving her the keys to this. Because as long as you keep your foot out of it, it's intentional speed. It's not crazy, accidental speed. You're not going to get in this car and go oh my god, I lost it and went into a telephone pole. You have to try. You have to tell you want to go faster. And if you don't, it's just like any other car. It's really docile. When you drive a C63, for example, you just feel how tight the car is, how well it corners, I mean, for such a big car. A 7000 RPM revving V8, seven speed transmission. These are things to us that were just-- we just saw a big opportunity to make something really nice out of it, that the market just didn't have. I mean, then you start getting into the SLSs, for example, and it's got a better transmission. It's a lightweight car. And they just work great with that supercharger system. And again it was just no one can do it. So it's something we stepped into. MATT FARAH: So what have we learned here? The 700 horsepower Renntech car that we drove was very fast, did rolling burn-outs, and yet, things worked a little better than this. Now I really like the guys at Weistec, and I genuinely-- the air conditioning, all that-- I don't think that's their fault. I really don't. So don't get too mad at them. I'm mad, because it's 97 degrees outside, and I have no air conditioning. But I'm not mad at them for it. It's just something that happens when you're turning. Is $16,000 for this much horsepower an amazing value when modifying E63? Absolutely. I mean, you're talking an extra almost 300 horsepower for 16 grand. That is nuts. TOM MORNINGSTAR: When we return to Weistec, an examination of the codes revealed a bad CAN-bus sensor, a common problem for this generation of E-Class and nothing to do with Weistec's tuning of the car. Yes, it was 100 degrees that day, and it's easy to blame Weistec for a car that isn't functioning perfectly all the time. But these are very complex vehicles with thousands of small parts that can fail. Besides you can't stay mad at a broken air conditioner for too long when you're out on the highway doing this. [CAR ENGINE REVVING]