At 70 years old, it’d be nice to buy dinner for 75 of my closest friends and me. To lift a pen to the glorious tab in front of my face at the end of the night and say: “Go ahead and use your hand at the chocolate fountain now, I paid for it anyway.”
That kind of freedom — to cup semi-liquid, poor-quality chocolate like water running from your bathtub — comes with excess.
Mercedes Benz has been capitalizing on that glorious freedom for awhile now. Granted, the 2014 GL63 AMG isn’t the kind of car you want to treat like flowing Hershey’s Shell (you know that’s just chocolate and vegetable oil, right?) but could potentially fit a lot of your friends. The three-row Goliath starts at $119,450 and probably doesn’t come with a free hat.
For twice the minivan money, you can get a wicked ride. A 5.5-liter biturbo demon under the hood that drubs 550 horsepower and 560 lb.-ft. of torque is the star attraction in the GL63, because the only earthly reason to buy one of these things is to haul some serious mass. The GL has serious family appeal considering its size, seating for seven and enough urgency and immediacy in the throttle to rival the Space Shuttle on take off. I should be clearer: this is massive and fast.
So fast, the folks at Car and Driver measured its takeoff at the line to 60 mph under 5 seconds. It has more horsepower than many sports cars today and weighs and looks like it takes up space for two.
Beyond the normal GL, the GL63 AMG adds special seats, wider wheel arches and enormous calipers tucked inside its 21-inch wheels. It doesn’t look particularly menacing cruising around town, which is a departure from other AMG vehicles. The GL63 also fits as standard active anti-roll bars (optional on other GL models) and all the goodies inside that you’d expect: 7-speaker surround sound, navigation, power seats everywhere and massage for driver and passenger. Our tester was fitted with an optional $5,400 Bang & Olufsen sound system that doesn’t seem so outrageous when measured against the rest of the car’s glut of expensive awesomeness.
The GL63 AMG then makes a case for the world’s best (and only) muscle car school bus on the planet. Power is shifted quickly through a seven-speed automatic transmission into an all-wheel drive system that Mercedes adapted for the GL63 only. The ride is comfortable, not overly harsh, and darting through traffic is remarkably easy. If you’re expecting nearly 6,000 lbs. to nimbly sashay around corners like a Porsche, you may be disappointed; the physical world has limits that even AMG engineers can’t overcome. Yet.
The sound bellowing from the square quad tips in back is glorious. The GL63 emits the same glorious growl that other cars fitted with the same engine (SL63, CLS63 and E63) possess with one key difference: the cabin is so quiet and sedate with the windows up; it’s barely perceptible unless you’re listening for it. Crank the windows down and turn the Disney Radio and you’ll catch it and scare the living daylights out of your kids in the process. Your pick on what’s more fun on the way home.
At first glance, the inclusion of two distinctly different comfort and sport settings would suggest ambition beyond reality. In fact, one of my favorite improperly enthusiastic features would be the GL63’s lap timer. (Pro tip: Shave hundredths off a school run by asking kids to leave heavy textbooks in their lockers.) But the different modes have different realities, too. In comfort, the steering is impossibly light for an SUV this size and in normal traffic circumstances it’s almost necessary to ask the car to do its part in handling itself. Switch it over to sport and the handling becomes perceptively stiffer and quicker on the interstate and instills confidence that you’re in command of this behemoth. In something like this, without proper command, the rest of the world can quickly turn into road kill.
You could make the case that the GL63 is blissfully unaware of the world around it. Not hampered by its weight and size, the engine underneath and anchors at the corners give drivers the confidence to gas it longer, brake harder and turn sharper at every corner in a hulking SUV that can carry a large family. But even the GL63 can’t escape gravity and the power consumption needed to defy it nearly always: this thing is massively thirsty. Rated at 13/17 mpg in city/highway driving by the EPA, it’s entirely possible to punch it below the teens. Mercedes added an “eco” start/stop feature to kill the engine at lights between stops at the gas station. Restarting is quick and despite the hulking V8, it manages to restart without perceptible engine shake.
If you can look beyond the fuel consumption, and the $120,000 entry price, the GL63 comes into view as a luxury family hauler for which there is little competition. Others in its class can boast the same luxury or size, but not the same speed, which brings us to the last point you could make about an SUV like this.
When you’ve covered the bill, shouldn’t you be the first to enjoy its excess?
Aaron Cole is managing editor of the Aurora Sentinel. Reach him at acole@aurorasentinel.com