Is the Mercedes-AMG GLC 63 S Coupe’s SUV-sports car combo good – or a disastrous union?
It’s powerful, luxurious and a joy to drive, but the sloped fastback styling makes it less useful for everyday life by reducing boot space and passenger headroom
In all honesty, I’ve never been a huge fan of the Mercedes SUV coupe. It’s a vehicle that is, to me, compromised at its very core.
The need to be an SUV raises its centre of gravity and thereby spoils its capabilities as a performance machine.
While the performance-oriented tyres and fastback rear end detract from its ability to go off road and carry cargo – two core competencies of SUVs.
This unholy union of luxury coupe and SUV is a somewhat recent phenomenon. Even though there had been a few oddball combinations in the 1980s and 1990s, the SUV coupe did not reach mainstream status until the latter part of the last decade when BMW released the X6.
To my dismay, it proved to be a success. Especially in what are arguably BMW's two most important markets – the US and China.
Since then, BMW has followed up with a second-generation mid-size X6 and a compact X4 coupe.
Naturally, Mercedes-Benz couldn’t let its arch nemesis go on unchallenged. Which is why Mercedes answered with the new compact GLC Coupe and the mid-size GLE Coupe.
Both vehicles are sleeker coupe variants of Mercedes' existing GLC and GLE SUVs.
Recently Mercedes dropped off a brand new 2018 Mercedes-AMG GLC 63 S Coupe for Business Insider to test.
We were able to spend a week driving the high-performance flagship model of the GLC line-up with hopes that its excellence would force me to reconsider my disdain for the SUV coupe genre.