Driving on the tight mountain roads on the Spanish island of Tenerife, the 2024 Mercedes-Benz AMG CLE 53 coupe chomps at the bit. Too big to feel comfortable on skinny roads with short run-off areas that vary between steep drop-offs and close-set barriers, the coupe could take flight in the worst ways. Yet it’s too powerful to putter behind a spate of Toyota flatbed pickups and Citroen C3s toddling along on island time.
AMG-tuned steering also helps. It’s a weightier, quicker version of the familiar steering in today’s Mercedes models: quick, kind of light but firmer in the Sport modes, and with a decent amount of road feel. Stronger brakes come in handy here, too. It gets 14.6-inch ventilated front rotors with 4-piston calipers and 14.2-inch internally ventilated rear discs with single-piston calipers. They handle all I have to throw at it on uphill and more importantly downhill runs without fading or getting hot enough to emit the odor I smelled in the CLE 450.
The AMG Dynamics system controls the stability control and all-wheel-drive system. Its settings include Basic, Advanced, Pro, and Master, and they also change with the driving mode. Sport and Sport+ allow for more freedom to spin the tires or kick the tail out, and I detect no stability control intervention when using either of those modes despite brisk driving. The sportier modes also send more power to the rear wheels for the fully variable all-wheel-drive system that AMG calls 4Matic+.
The engine becomes especially talkative in Sport+ mode with snaps and crackles on overrun and subtle burps between gears to accompany its smooth growl. Power comes on quickly and builds strongly, which makes getting by those Toyota pickups a breeze. However, the power lacks the suddenness and unrelenting nature of an AMG V-8, and the 53 isn’t appreciably quicker than the CLE 450, with an equivalent 0-60 mph time of 4.2 seconds. The Race Start mode cuts the time to 4.0 seconds.
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