Back in February, spy photographers caught
a glimpse of a camouflaged Mercedes-Benz C-Class. Is wasn’t a typical sedan,
however, as it was festooned with massive brakes and the front end camouflage
we usually see on models concealing a Panamericana grille. It didn’t look super
aggressive though, so our sources speculated it could be an AMG C53 model.
Now we have a new set of spy photos of a
different prototype, and the assessment is the same. The prototype isn’t the
same however, as we see different camo coverings for the grille and looking
close, we can barely make out a Panamericana grille hiding beneath it. This
prototype also has a different rear fascia, fitted with quad exhaust outlets as
we’d expect to find on an AMG-spec C-Class. They look a bit janky, but
considering the placeholder taillights just above and the mismatched wheels,
this particular test vehicle is far from production-spec.
Could this be a C63 instead of a
lower-level C53? The tires do look a bit wider, and there are some strange
whisker spoilers up front that are interesting. However, our sources on this
particular car tell us it definitely had the sound of a four-cylinder engine.
That almost certainly means a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-pot is under the
hood, possibly pulled from the AMG A45 S where it makes 416 horsepower. It would be a modest upgrade from the current C43’s 385-hp twin-turbo V6, without encroaching too much on the V8 punch emanating from the
C63.
Unfortunately, we still have a long wait
ahead of us to see if our guesstimates are correct. We haven’t even seen the
new C-Class revealed, which should come before the end of 2020. That means we
likely won’t see AMG models revealed until well into 2021.
