2021 Mercedes AMG GLE 63 S: Ultimate SUV Reviewed + Offroad Test

Today we're checking out the latest from Mercedes' AMG division. This is the GLE 63 S. It's a manic monster of a crossover that may change the way you think about the segment. It's coming up right now on Driving Sports TV. The GLE midsize crossover is one of the most popular vehicles sold by Mercedes-Benz. It starts at around $55,000 for the 2020 GLE 350. That comes with a 2.0-liter turbo 4 generating up to 255 horsepower connected to a 9-speed transmission. Add on some options and the price can swell quickly. This particular GLE in lunar blue metallic with 4MATIC all-wheel drive, surround sound, digital gauges, 20-inch wheels, expanded 3-row seating, and a lot more tips the scales at nearly $66,000. But that's not even close to how much you can spend on a GLE. Let me introduce you to the biggest, the baddest, and the most feature-rich GLE you can buy. This is the 2021 GLE 63 S by AMG. It's the top shelf GLE that will not only have you questioning just how much you'd be willing to spend on a crossover, it'll challenge your perspective on what is possible. Pricing starts at $113,950. Our test car came with a number of upgrades, bringing the total to $131,935 including destination and delivery. The heart of every AMG is the engine. For 2021, we get another banger. A 4-liter V8 biturbo good for 603 horsepower and 627 pound-feet of torque. It's connected to a 48-volt EQ Boost hybrid system, which in turn is connected to a 9-speed automatic transmission. AMG's 4MATIC Plus all-wheel drive system is standard. The estimated EPA rating will be 15 mpg in the city and 19 mpg on the highway. In terms of practicality, the form factor of the AMG GLE is quite useful. It has a spacious trunk with up to 39.3 cubic feet of storage. Under the floor is space to store a privacy screen and a spare. Fold down the second row for a maximum capacity of 74.9 cubic feet. That puts it on par with the Ford Edge in terms of cargo capacity. The second row is quite spacious and airy thanks to a massive panorama sunroof. Legroom is also quite good. Passengers get their own aircon as well as dual USB-C charging jacks. And as an added bonus, power sunscreens are a push-button away. The main cabin of the AMG GLE 63 S is a masterwork. Leather, metal, carbon fiber and suede create an experience like no other. Even the Burmeister's speaker grilles are spectacular. The seats are covered in Nappa leather and they're quite comfortable with massage, heating and cooling. You can even run special programs that incorporate seat actions along with sound and fragrances. Even the beverage holders are heated and cooled with a push of a button. If you have a compatible device, you can charge your mobile on the included wireless charging system so long as your phone isn't larger than my iPhone 11 Pro. It barely fit. Even though Mercedes keeps promising wireless CarPlay, in this model you'll still have to use one of the USB sockets. Even so, CarPlay looks fantastic on the large 12.3-inch central display. I wouldn't normally pay much attention to the steering wheel in a review, but just look at it. Your eyes don't deceive you, that is an OLED drive mode selector on the right, with additional options on the left. It also features touch-sensitive trackpads, carbon fiber and paddle shifters. A fully digital display cluster is standard at this level. This can be customized to your liking, either by itself or tied into the GLE63S's theme selector. Simply make a selection, like adventure, and almost every aspect of the vehicle is modified. This one brings up cameras, the off-road gauge cluster, off-road specific heads-up display, as well as raises the vehicle more than two extra inches. In terms of pre-built themes, the opposite end of the spectrum is racetrack, which drops the vehicle to its lowest 7.5-inch ride height, loads the race cluster, and will even load track-specific tools and telemetry. If none of the pre-built themes excite you, you can always build your own. If all you want to do is adjust the drive mode, you can do that independently if you prefer, of course. There are lots of options, like Comfort, Sport Plus, Slippery, and Trail. The active exhaust system has two different modes, balanced or powerful. Let's listen to them. First, balanced. Now, powerful. On our test car, standard Active Safety is supplemented with the optional Driver Assistance Plus package. It was loaded with dynamic LED headlights, a full surround-view camera system with dynamic guides and user-selectable angles, collision mitigation and blind-spot monitors, as well as a lot more. You can control the vehicle using a variety of touch surfaces, from the central pad to the steering inputs or just touch the screen. It's really great to have so many options, even if it can be a little overwhelming at first. Considering how crazy and configurable this interior is, it's kinda cool that the outside still remains rather understated. It really gives the vibe of a wolf in sheep's clothing. But enough of the facts, features, and options. Let's have some fun. For our first test, we're going to see how the 4MATIC Plus all-wheel drive system responds to slip. The AMG variant of 4MATIC can send up to 100% of available torque to the rear wheels. It also uses brake vectoring to push power around the system where it's used best. If you want to learn more about this system, watch our 4MATIC Explained video from a couple years ago. Before starting the test, we did tape up the side skirts to avoid gravel rash. Something about the price of this one made us a little bit more careful than usual. With the drive mode selected to comfort, acceleration was brisk, with minimal wheel spin. Let's look again in slow motion. There is clearly power going to both the front and the back, which is good. Next, the snow or slippery mode. Subdued wheel spin and a retarded throttle lends itself to less drama. Sand is typically the most dramatic on these vehicles, but in these conditions, it still looked very much like comfort. Finally, race mode, which is designed to push more power to the rear. But as you can see, in reality, traction control did rear its head and created fairly even and fast launch experiences across the board. We will put this AWD system through the ringer later in this video. First, let's see how it handles on the street. One highlight of this GLE63S is AMG's Active Ride Control, which is new for 2021. This provides active damping in the sport-oriented modes. In Sport Plus, automatically now, it's keeping the revs a lot higher than normal. It still keeps it in automatic mode. If I want to go into manual shifting mode, I can either just override it with the paddle shifters or I can switch into full manual mode down here. And with that, the shifts are very quick. Time to try 0-60. But we're going to do this in Sport Plus. I got the drag race timer on. Let's go ahead and hit play. 3, 2, 1, go. What? 30, 40, 50, 60, long time ago. Whoa. Now, it tells me that I jumped my start, so canceling measurement. Oh, well. Let's try that again. 3, 2, 1, and go. Holy mother of God. 60. 4.04 seconds, 0-60. Oh, my God. This thing is fast. What just happened? Get your head around this. This thing is over 5,500 pounds. It has more than 600 horsepower, 627 pound-feet of torque, all-wheel drive. It's a twin-turbocharged V8. Plus, it has a not insignificant hybrid electric motor in the powertrain to give you more electric boost from start, but, you know, before the twin turbos take over. This thing, this just blows my mind. I mean, dude, so cool. That puts it in very rarefied company. I mean, you're looking at things with, like, a Lamborghini or a Bentley badge on them. The Urus that we tested a couple years ago, that one was crazy fast, and it is slightly faster than this. But there really isn't much else in this space. I mean, Audi doesn't have anything like this. The only thing you'd come close for less money is the Jeep Trackhawk. But that's obviously a very different vehicle. That thing is a sledgehammer. This, this is Mjolnir, right? Yeah, Marvel geek in the back, you know what I'm talking about. Okay, I gotta say, this car is so weird. I've been driving for a bit up into the mountains. It said, do I want to start the Vitality program? I'd say yes. It starts playing music, gives me this graphic, and it's giving me a lower back massage. Yes, please. Now, just because it is insane performance doesn't mean that they haven't also kept some safety in mind. I'm going to go ahead and change the theme back to normal mode. And here I'm going to go ahead and try the adaptive cruise control because, yeah, it's got it. I hit on, I hit pace, I wait for it to pick up the lanes. And now it'll drive for me, but only for a little bit, of course. Lane centering is a little nerve wracking. Let's try this in the corner. Let's see how it does. It's warning me to put my hands back on the wheel. Yeah, it's a little bouncy. I've driven better. It's not the strong suit of this car, but it at least has basic functionality in terms of semi-lane centering and definitely has the adaptive cruise control down just fine. So that's, you know, important for when you're driving state to state to that next racetrack. It even has a Burmeister sound system, you know, so you can totally jam while you're racing around the Nürburgring as one does. Question is, what song would you choose to jam to on your Burmeister in your GLE AMG 63 S while you were driving around the Nürburgring? Post a comment below. Because I'm curious, what would you play? I mean, would you be like the kind of person who wants something totally contrary? Would you like Blast Enya? Or would you put on Rage Against the Machine? Or something else? I am really curious what my viewers listen to. That said, man, this thing is just so well put together and there are so many features in this. It has air suspension, so it can go up and down as necessary. Obviously, you put it into sport plus or race mode, it's going to drop it as much as possible. It also, of course, has an off-road mode because, yeah, you're going to take this off-road, right? Well, we are. Even with the summer tires on it. Because I put a poll up on YouTube and you guys said you wanted to see it. So, we're not going to go too crazy, but we're going to test a couple things. I mean, you can hear, there's no rattles. The sound from the outside is very subdued. I'm right next to a freeway and I don't even hear it. Most vehicles I can. And even the suspension is pretty nicely slung. This is in comfort mode. I haven't even put it. Let's go ahead and switch it into, switch it into, let's go to trail. Suspension is going to rise up. Nice. For some reason, Mercedes always sends me cars with summer tires. And not just summer tires. These are 22s on gorgeous wheels. So, as normally I might drive these gravel roads a bit briskly, today I'm tippy-toeing up. Because I do not want to flat up here. And with 22s, yeah, there's a good chance of getting one. So, I'm just, it's going to be a long drive up. Thankfully, I was able to make it up to the challenge course without any issues. The location we use is off the track and nestled deep in the Cascade Mountains. Obviously, appropriate tires with more sidewall are a must if this is the kind of adventure you'll be doing on the regular. Okay, here is the short, steep climb. And what we're going to do today is we're going to test to see how this all-wheel drive system responds to stressful situations. Now, I know that you wouldn't normally do this on summer compounds. That's kind of ridiculous. But it will show how the all-wheel drive system pushes power to the front, to the back, to the left, to the right. Which this system does. Also, we can see how some of the gauges work here in an off-road situation. So, to prep the vehicle, there's really not a lot to do. I'm already at the highest ride height, but there are a few things that can be done. And to do that, I'm just going to go to themes. I'm going to flip over to adventure. And voila! I get an off-road specific heads-up display. I get off-road specific gauge cluster. It engages my surround view camera system. And the vehicle, if it wasn't already at its maximum height, it would rise up. It also put it into trail mode, which is going to subdue my throttle so I'm not as, you know, lurchy as I might normally be on the street. So, with that said, I'm putting it into drive. And we are about to go up the climb. I'm just going to approach real slowly. I'm going to stop halfway up to stress this all-wheel drive system even more. Okay, let's stop completely. There we go. It says we're at a 30... It's calculating. This is a 36% angle. So, let's accelerate a little more and we'll see how this all-wheel drive system responds. Uh... Wow, okay. That's how you do that. If you saw me going up here with the Subaru, with the Venza, with all sorts of different vehicles, that was the least dramatic on the worst possible tires. Here's a clip of the new Toyota Venza Hybrid making the same climb. And now our long-term 2020 Subaru Outback Onyx XT, which is one of the top performers in this class. Wow, okay. Again, this vehicle impresses by being a total boss. I wonder if it has hill descent control. Let's try that going backwards. Nope, that's not it. Let's see, how can we do... Regarding hill descent control, Mercedes assured me that it is a feature on this AMG GLE 63 S. But I looked everywhere and could not find it. Their exact response was that the feature was either on a button below the screen, which it wasn't, or that it was buried in a menu somewhere in the system, which is quite possible. There are a lot of options here. Should I do the crosscut climb with summer tires? Sure, let's do it. Why not? It's only a $132,000 vehicle. I'm sure it'll do fine. The crosscut climb is a particularly challenging obstacle because it's not only steep, it also removes traction from two wheels, effectively requiring the one rear wheel to do most of the work. In our testing, vehicles with multiple locking differentials do quite good, and everything else struggles hard. So considering that this GLE does require on-brake locking E differentials, like most mainstream crossovers these days, it'll be interesting to see how well it does. I've done lots of interesting things on this show. This might be one of the more interesting. Doing the crosscut climb with summer tires. I don't know what else to say. Let's just give it a try, see what it does. If it doesn't make it, we cannot blame the Mercedes. It's like running up on banana peels, okay? So I'm in drive. I am still in... Let's go back to that off-road theme. Adventure theme. Trail mode does something kind of cool with the transmission in that it gives me really slow response. I mean, I'm tipping my throttle in and it just eases up. So, teetering. It's shifting power. It's trying. It's trying. What? Oh my gosh. That's a 34% maximum, and it just does it. It does it so easy. I'm going to have to use a clip of that, like every single time I take a mainstream crossover, when people are like, hey, you have the wrong tires, that's why it's having trouble. Yeah. Mercedes AMG GLE 63S on summer tires. Suck it, Torbeck. In the slow motion replay, you can see the system doing all the work, as it shifts power from wheels that start slipping by applying brakes much quicker than other systems. This then pushes that power back to the other wheels, propelling the GLE upward. This is a spectacular result for a brake vectoring-based system in these conditions on these tires, and it should really give pause to anyone that considered such a system as inadequate for real off-roading. I guess one thing to do is to go down now. Since I don't have, at least I can't find, a downhill crawl control, I am instead just going to use the paddle shifters and see what that does for me. I'm going to rotate on this little tabletop, which is kind of ridiculous, to get a good angle. It's really helpful having this round-view camera there. Okay, and then kind of arc over here. And then before I go down, I'm going to switch this into manual mode. I'm in manual one, which should give me my slowest crawl, and hopefully we don't hit anything on the way down. Let's look at that articulation on the outside. Oh, it's not too bad. Now to sum up my thoughts about this 2021 AMG GLE 63S. So really the ultimate reason to get a vehicle like this, even as expensive as it is, is because it does so many things so incredibly well. I mean, think of it. How many cars do you think, can you think of right at the top of your head, that can be a great track day car, can comfortably drive to the store with the kids, and go off-road? And we're not even talking a little bit off-road, like put proper tires on this thing. It can pretty much go anywhere. I mean, the list. I can't think of anything that does it as well as this does. So, ultimately, do I love this car? Yeah, I do. I mean, you think, it's $130,000. Well, that's a lot of money. But how much would it cost you to buy, you know, a Jeep, a Honda Pilot, and a caged Miata? Yeah, you could probably get all three of those for a little bit less. But this does all of those things better. And it's one car. And it's amazing. And it gives me a back massage. I mean, really, if you want, like, what is the perfect car, I think this GLE might be it. Whoa! That said, my wife hates it. She doesn't like driving this thing at all. So, maybe it's not the perfect car. But it's the perfect car for somebody. And that somebody's me. I know I sound like I'm totally gushing on this thing, and I am. It's because it really is. It blows your mind with how good it is at every single thing. Now, the big question mark is, of course, long-term reliability. There's a lot of stuff going into this car, and it will not be cheap to maintain. That you can pretty much guarantee. However, if you want to lease one of these for, like, three years, for three years, you will have just an amazing vehicle. For Driving Sports TV, I'm Ryan Douthit. Thanks for watching. Be sure to subscribe, leave a comment. Don't forget to tell us what song you would listen to in this car driving around the Nurburgring at full throttle, because I'm curious. Be sure to subscribe. Thank you for watching. We'll see you again next week.