Ray Leathern has a self-confessed dislike for commuting, citing boredom and time wasting as the bane of his existence. Thankfully for our man Ray, the Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG Coupé is to public transport, what Rammstein’s brutally intense rock is to the old age home.

Let’s get a few things straight. I have an irretrievable dislike for commuting. I mean a properly passionate, its the one thing I know about myself for sure, I don’t want to be somewhere I wasn’t 2 minutes ago. It’s probably the biggest obstacle we’ve created for ourselves in modern society. The seven billionth human being was born just this past month and moreover, we as the human race have got it into our heads that we’re entitled to travel, see everything and do the whole ‘the world is our oyster’ spiel.

The boredom is the biggest problem, and the time wasting. If you’re middle aged, you only have around 200 000 hours left to live. And somehow we’re happy to spend them sitting in a cramped, low cost, Boeing 727, or on a bus to the 727. Well, I’m sick of it. That’s where Mercedes-Benz’s Rammstein division, AMG, enters into the equation.

I like a fast car in the same way a pilot likes a Gripen fighter plane, because it makes air travel better. In a fast car with a monstrously powerful engine, you turn a tedious commute into a thrilling joyride. Driving fast and feeling your organs move to the bottom of your spine as you accelerate; cornering hard and revelling in the G-fuelled thrills as you slice the car through a series of bends, now that’s travelling. And the sound, that glorious AMG sound, my goodness. It gives your journey meaning and colour. Put simply, the more kW and Nm under the bonnet, the more your life is enriched and the more meaningful those 200 000 hours left on earth are going to be.

Sure a frugal Suzuki Swift will get you there in almost the exact same time, probably; but no, just no… one is for commuting and the other is for enriching. The Mercedes-Benz I’m talking about in particular is the newest one, the C63 AMG Coupé, the one built to take on the gold standard sports coupé, the BMW M3.

C-Class AMG’s have never been perfect by any stretch but they have been memorable. The outgoing model only came as a four door and had a propensity to oversteer more than Ken Block after a few too many Monster energy drinks. It was ultra-firm, hard riding and being a brutish AMG, it was about as well loved (by other road users that is) as saying you were family friends with Lolly Jackson. However, for turning a mundane commute into a glorious, pile driving indulgence, you honestly couldn’t think of anything better; particularly if you loved going fast in a straight line and shedding rubber in the turns.

This new C63 AMG Coupé gets the latest styling tweaks to the front and back end, as we’ve seen on the facelifted C-Class and new C-Class Coupé, a ‘one louver’ radiator grille, an aluminium bonnet with extra bulges, as well as a black rear diffuser for extra menace. It retains the same hand built, normally aspirated, 6.2-litre V8 from the previous C63; the engine that won ‘Engine of the Year’ in the 4.0-litre or bigger category in 2009 and 2010. That means it still mashes out 336 kW and 600 Nm, but now it has a better transmission to try and tame the beast. The new 7-speed AMG Speedshift MCT has ‘wet clutch’ with a new Race Start function and shifts gears in 100 milli-seconds.

The benchmark 0 – 100 km/h sprint is over in 4.4 seconds and top speed is electronically limited to 250 km/h. A R71 000 ‘Performance Package’ will give you better brakes and an increase in power to 358 kW, which Mercedes claim will get you to 100 km/h just 0.1 seconds quicker. A R25 000 ‘Drivers Package’ will get you up to 280 km/h flat out, should you wish to try that sort of thing. Underneath all that, the standard Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG Coupé retails for R923 700.

Significant tweaks can be found on the chassis and suspension settings. As if to try ‘turn a corner’ (excuse the pun) from AMG’s normal, hooligan reputation, the front and rear suspensions are completely redone, in an effort to keep all that power going to the black stuff and not into the atmosphere as tyre smoke. So you get a three-link, front suspension setup that is 36 mm wider, 100% stiffer and with more negative camber. The totally redesigned, four-link, rear suspension is 12 mm wider, set for more negative camber, features new stabilisers with a greater cross section to reduce roll angle, and also boasts new optimised spring and damper rates to keep the rear end in check for longer. You do, however, need to specify a limited-slip differential, which you used to just get as standard on the old C63 AMG. This smacks a little bit of a classic, Mercedes-Benz rip off if you ask me, but they justify it by saying not many C63 AMG customers wanted one to start with… okay, sure. The ESP also has a new ‘Sport Handling’ mode, showing AMG’s clear intent to not just make another mad, Mercedes, muscle car.

Well, that’s the departure point at least, and that’s where the C63 AMG Coupé starts to rip up the play book, and the tarmac, quite literally. You put your foot down and expose yourself to all of those 600 Nm that could set the earth spinning the other way and that normally aspirated V8 soundtrack that belongs somewhere on a NASCAR oval, not a road car, and your life becomes instantly enriched. Like I mentioned up top, there is just a swirl of goose bumps, adrenaline, sweat and emotion that this car elicits that makes it more than something you commute in. It’s just brilliant.

What I love most is that if you consider the normal pedal travel of a car is what… 30 cm? And this AMG produces 600 Nm of twisting force. This means if you’re pushing just one third of the way down on the throttle, you’re already shunting 200 Nm onto the rear wheels, that’s basically the same bite that you get from an entire supercharged, Toyota Auris TRD.

The ride quality is firm and jarring at slow speeds, what did you expect? Slipping it into ‘sport handling mode,’ is the next step if you’re on the public road, where the steering and the throttle tightens up all around. You tip it into a corner and the front grabs hard onto the road, the steering providing adequate feeling. It doesn’t roll at all like you may have imagined it would, and as you nudge the throttle carefully (10 cm = 200 Nm, remember) the rear tyres start to chirp, not slide or misbehave or do anything ghoulish, but they’re communicating with you, not snapping at you.

My overall impression, from having driven the C63 AMG Coupé on the racetrack and on the public road now, is that it’s actually just a big, friendly giant. Intimidating to look at and listen to… sure, but more than anything, it’s just a fun, lovable monster. Or a fun loving criminal more like. The tweaks to the suspension have worked, in that if you want to drive the C63 AMG Coupé with delicacy, it will respond accordingly with good composure; but when the mood takes you, it still hasn’t lost that muscle car edge either.

The Mercedes Benz C63 AMG Coupé doesn’t come cheap however, and we’re not entirely convinced it’s better than a BMW M3. The BMW M3 is, arguably, built with more focus, like its cabon fibre roof, and light weight, high revving V8, etc. Whereas the C63 AMG Coupé, in true AMG spirit, feels more simplistic…; it doesn’t even have pillarless doors for instance, which I might find grating on my coupé. But, quite honestly, it doesn’t really matter because when there are only 200 000 hours left to live, what are you going to take? M-Power or AMG? I might just find myself erring towards the AMG.

Prices include a 2-year/unlimited km warranty and 60 000km maintenance plan.