Mercedes S63 L AMG (W221) | The Brave Pill

Not its first trip down the aisle...

How best to celebrate a fourth birthday? A trip to McDonalds and a Paw Patrol cake? Or a considerably richer slice of German Borkenkuchen? You’ll be unsurprised to hear that Brave Pill has opted for the second of these, although we might squeeze in a celebratory Happy Meal later on as well.

That’s because it was on the 24th February 2019 that we ran the first-ever Brave Pill. That was a shabby but enticingly priced Mercedes CLK 55 AMG which had been chosen to exemplify the levels of appealing (and sometimes peeling) risk the column had been commissioned to celebrate. So how better to leave toddlerhood than with another AMG, albeit one with a higher price and many, many more things to go wrong? Indeed barring the AMG One hypercar and its Formula 1-derived engine, it’s pretty much impossible to think of another of the performance division’s products that represent greater complexity than a W221 generation S63 AMG, especially one which has covered more than 200,000 miles.

Given the number of large-engined versions of the S-Class and its variants to have been Pill’d, you won’t be surprised to hear that this S63L isn’t our first W221 rodeo. We ran what was pretty much a vanilla-grade S500 back in October 2020, that being a 2006 car being offered for a “take my money!” £6,995. Further back, when Brave Pill was barely two months old, the column featured an S600L which was up for just nine grand - although with an advert that seemed to have been written on a Nokia mobile phone.

But this week’s offering is in the Champion’s League. Yes, it’s more expensive, priced at a curiously specific £17,494 (actually £17,584 once the cheeky £90 admin fee mentioned in the advert text has been factored in) but it still looks cheap compared to the wider market, being barely more than half the price of a cushty low-miler of the same vintage.

Of course, any big-engined Merc from this period offers an enhanced level of peril, as do many of the smaller-engined ones. Our Pill dates from after the true nadir of Merc build quality - the time in the late nineties and early noughties when many were sporting visible rust before their fifth birthdays - and the reputation turned from bank vault to rank fault. Yet although the W221 S-Class doesn’t suffer from grot, the S63 is still one of the most complex examples of a car that was never famed for flawless reliability, even when new and loved.

Because many of what were the W221’s technical highlights have the potential to become expensive liabilities. The list includes the standard air suspension - with the AMG getting the extra complication of the roll-fighting Active Body Control system - both of which can throw up £££ bills. But it is the S-Class’s electronic complexity that can actually cause more frustration thanks to the combination of then high-tech features and linked by a data network managed by a multitude of control modules, many of which seem to communicate using AOL dial-up. Failures can be hard to trace and expensive to fix.

Mechanically the news is generally better. Our Pill is late enough to have the twin-turbo M157 5.5-litre V8, which is generally reckoned to be pretty tough if looked after - and which had a low-rev muscularity that suited the car’s character better than the revvier naturally aspirated M156 of earlier W221s. The very fact our Pill has travelled so far suggests a considerable amount of care and attention has indeed been spent on it - this certainly isn’t a car that is going to tolerate 200,000 miles of neglect.

So plenty of silver lining - but also a fair amount of cloud. Attempting to read the ALL CAPS advert might well give you a headache, especially as every sentence ends in a screamer! Which quickly grows old! Doesn’t it?! Picking out the salient details reveals plenty of ticked options boxes on top of what was already generous standard spec, including the panoramic glass roof, heated, cooled and powered seats front and rear and the harmon/kardon speaker system. The dealer selling it also promises it has been freshly serviced, although the claim “WON’T NEED ANOTHER SERVICE FOR A LONG WHILE!” shouldn’t be treated as any kind of indemnity against substantial financial spend. The dealer also says it is being sold as a part-ex without any warranty, which is one for the forum’s consumer rights specialists to pick over.

The advert does highlight a few issues. The first is a colour change, with the original black having been inverted with a pearlescent wrap. The pictures suggest this has been applied to a decent standard, and the car’s hue has been changed on the DVLA database, which often isn’t the case with lower-cost conversions by Stanley knife merchants. But whoever did the wrapping put the tailgate badge on wrong - too high and incorrectly spaced. It also has what the vendor admits is a mileage discrepancy due to a speedometer change.

Enzo the hamster is back off strike and has been able to dig a registration out of the database for a closer look at the MOT record. This sports a predictable crop of advisories for tyres, brakes and suspension components - although no scary fails - but it also reveals some serious mileage acquisition. Between January and December 2015 the car put on nearly 55,000 miles - which must have stung a bit at 20mpg - recording 200,940 miles at the time of the second test. The following MOT wasn’t until August 2017, by which time the odometer was showing 20,520 miles, and it has been climbing slowly since to the 34,397 it recorded last December. Put that together and, presuming the mileage went back down to zero, the total is somewhere slightly beyond 235,000 at this point. Assuming that 2017 wasn’t the car’s first haircut.

So lots to discuss, it’s fair to say - but much of the obvious risk has clearly been priced into the equation, too. The combination of our Pill’s altitudinous mileage and albino colour scheme suggests its middle years may well have been spent working as a wedding car, a role for which it certainly seems well suited. Could it be somebody’s perfect match? Does Pill need to buy a new hat?

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Dombilano

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