First Drive: Does the Mercedes-AMG E53 trade plug-in hybrid power for personality?

Mercedes-AMG thinks the plug-in hybrid setup in this car – the new E53 – could be the answer. Bringing together petrol and electric power, it might be a ‘best of both worlds’ situation, and we’ve been behind the wheel to find out.

It’s a transition that AMG has tried with the recent C63, too, ditching that car’s 4.0-litre V8 in favour of a four-cylinder 2.0-litre turbocharged petrol with plug-in hybrid assistance.

But you also get an electric range of up to 57 miles, usable at speeds of up to 87mph, while CO2 emissions are incredibly low at just 23g/km. Mercedes claims you’ll get up to 282.5mpg, too, but realistically you’d have to be doing all of your driving on pure electric power in order to achieve this.

Ask a little more of the E53 and that straight-six will spark into life. There’s a lot of piped-in sound, which is a shame as the 3.0-litre has a pleasantly old-school sound in its own right. There’s more than enough performance – available whenever you need it – and even with the batteries fully depleted, you never feel as if you’re caught short. There’s just a lovely smooth, old-school feeling to the way the E53 goes down the road; keep things unhurried and this has all the feel of a classic long-distance GT.

Remember, you can get the E53 in both saloon and estate layouts – with our test car being the latter – and we’d argue that the ‘wagon’ looks the best of the two.

You’d expect the Estate version to be effortlessly practical and while the 460-litre boot isn’t bad, it’s down by a huge 180 litres on the luggage area you’d find in the older E63, owing to the batteries being fitted in the rear of this new model. You’ll get even less – 370 litres in total – from the saloon, too.

It all comes at a cost – £109,745, to be exact, if you include our test car’s options – but in the overall landscape of modern performance cars, this price tag isn’t out of the ordinary.

The Mercedes-AMG E53 is quite a difficult car to gauge. Naturally, the removal of the old car’s V8 engine means that a lot of character has been lost, but you could argue that with its impressive electric-only range and low CO2 emissions, more people will find this car a practical choice for day-to-day driving. The sheer downturn in boot space is more of an annoyance to this tester, in truth, as it diminishes the overall practicality of what is a very large estate car.

But boot space aside, the E53 might not have the swashbuckling nature of the car which came before it, but with its smooth, classic-feeling performance, we don’t think you’ll be left looking for more.