OPINION: There's still no replacement for displacement

I of course refer to the recently-neutered C63 and the new Mercedes-AMG GT43, which both use 2.0-litre turbocharged engines in place of a beloved V8. Where once there beat the heart of a barrel-chested Mongolian throat singer, now there’s the thrum and pop of your nan’s badly-wired sewing machine – more tongs than Hammer, more beige hamster than Red Pig.

As a journalist of course I’m forced to concede that without driving them, I can’t conclude whether they’re good cars or not. I’d certainly like to confirm for sure. But I can conclude that 450kg extra in the C63 doesn’t bode well and that on a personal level, just by looking at the spec sheet and listening to clips, I couldn’t want one any less. Seemingly, at least in the case of the C63 which has had a year on sale, nor do most of the people who did used to want the V8-powered ones. Reports coming from German dealers suggest demand is “close to zero”.

The GT43 is at least only an entry point to a range of AMG GT variants with most being V8s and one that, for whatever reason, the UK won’t get. It’s also not a hybrid and, unlike its V8 siblings, not all-wheel-drive. That means it’s some 200kg lighter, which has allowed Mercedes to at a pinch market it as the “purist’s” AMG GT.

But I don’t really care. It could fold a 911 in half dynamically and I’d still pay over the odds for the Porsche, because it’s the car with the number of cylinders it was born to have that’ll make me smile rather than despair every time I fire it up.

I should say at this point that Mercedes is only bearing the brunt of this rant at the moment because A) it’s probably the most egregious offender but B) it’s also only today’s offender. Because they’ve all been at it, for over a decade.

Jaguar famously added the 2.0-litre engine to the F-Type range, for those who wanted all the style and none of the substance. The loin-girding Maserati 4.7-litre V8 is no more, with the delightful but different twin-turbo Nettuno V6 taking its place before Maserati acquiesces in totality to electric power. 

Aston Martin isn’t far from phasing out the V12, as McLaren and Ferrari drop from V8s to (admittedly excellent) V6s. Even Lamborghini is shortly to drop its V10 for a new hybrid twin-turbo V8. BMW M3s and Audi RS 4s once howled with glorious high-revving V8s but they fairly swiftly made way for turbocharged six-cylinder lumps.

But a six in a BMW makes a whole lot more sense than a four-pot in a full-fat AMG. Because I don’t think there’s a car out there that seems quite so naked as a high-ranking AMG when doing without a bristlingly-alive, broad-of-displacement multi-cylinder engine. Even the lovely 4.0-litre twin-turbo M176 mill was the beginning of the end, replacing as it did the effervescent, iconic and beloved 6.2-litre naturally-aspirated M156, which once had the power in its soundtrack alone to re-awaken central London air raid sirens.

But with the four-pot, the scourge of downsizing has reached critical mass. That the highest-performance C-Class wears the C63 badge is borderline false advertising in my mind. Even former AMG CEO Tobias Moers seemed to feel similarly, famously handing in his notice a few years back on the news he’d be forced to carry out such a ghoulish transplant.

'There’s no replacement for displacement' was an old adage typically spouted by meathead drag racers with 427CI muscle cars who thought turbocharging was for communists. They were (and still are) hilariously wrong, of course, at least where outright performance is concerned. Now more than ever in 2024, though, I think it’s an expression that’s taken on new meaning.

Those who know me will know this is a subject I’m passionate about and that I put my money where my mouth is. The current head of my personal fleet sports a 5.0-litre V8, which itself was a downsize from the 5.7-litre car it replaced. It’s the ever-rarified un-lobotomised sound of these engines as they gargle into life, that gives me that warm feeling of satisfaction that this is the special one; that I’m not just an NPC adding to the traffic and that my car is almost alive, with a personality all of its own.

Am I no better than those old pony car curmudgeons? Maybe. I understand the need for electrification, the push to reduce CO2 and all that stuff. But I and many others just can’t shake the feeling that as cylinder counts and litreage drops, the hearts and souls of many great fast cars dim to a flicker in their modern-day equivalents.