Diwali is the festival of lights; a celebration full of lamps, diyas, rangoli and waistline expanding mithai. The spirit of Diwali, in fact, is so infectious, it nowadays gets carried over to the workplace. Lanterns decorate our halls, the staff are decked out in their finest traditional wear and the mood in general is so upbeat, everyone’s busy celebrating, and passing boxes of sweets around. So last Diwali, we in the edit department decided to hold our own little celebration. Thing is, we wanted something a bit more exciting, something a bit louder, more flash. Yes, fire-crackers would have nailed it, but since we didn’t want to choke the neighbours or scare the wildlife, we got on the howler and asked AMG if we could borrow some of theirs. Amazingly, they agreed! And boy, did they lay it on. They put everything on the table; regular sparklers, loud atom bombs and some genuine rockets too. Ten of Affalterbach’s finest, almost the full deck, every single AMG sold here! Wow; this was shaping up nicely.
The plan was simple – we’d drive up from Mumbai in a few of the cars, enjoying the wide open expanse of the expressway with some ‘right-foot-down’, and then catch up with the rest of the pack in the town of Lonavala. The next few hours would be spent howling up and down the 20-odd kilometres of winding ghat roads that lead up to Aamby Valley. And we even booked Aamby Valley’s airstrip for the afternoon, so we could shoot and hoon around without attracting too much unwarranted attention. Fireworks – yeah, we were gonna get some.
Dawn is still a few minutes away, but we are already on the road. I’m behind the wheel of the recently washed C 63 S. And what a ride it is. The Nascar-like ‘brap’ from the exhaust is crisp and tight, and the Speed 97 I’ve brimmed the tank with last night seems to be coursing through its veins like 50 cans of Red Bull, and though it is currently running in ‘comfort’ mode, it still feels primed for action. An empty stretch of road pops up and I briefly squeeze the right pedal; the C 63 just goes ape. The rump of the car does a mini jig before the wide 265mm rears find traction, and the C is then shot down the road with an energy only previously experienced in a supercar. The real head scratcher is that this motor hasn’t crossed 5000rpm yet: there’s another 2000rpm to go! The ability of this car to slingshot you forward from anywhere in the powerband is just unreal. It’s simple; flex the throttle after 2000rpm anywhere in the powerband and it’s instant whiplash — whack. Now Mumbai’s streets aren’t the ideal playground for this car, far from it, but once I get to the roads that lead out of town, I squeeze down a bit harder and let the motor scream all the way to the redline. Performance is biblical, off the charts. There’s even a playful friendliness to the way it handles. The ride is quite hard and unforgiving over poorly surfaced city roads, even in comfort, and the steering is quite light, but the car does give you plenty of confidence to press on and slide it. And then to top it off, it’s a four seater with a big boot and decent ground clearance, so it is pretty practical too. You don’t get a spare tyre though; just a puncture repair kit.
