Mercedes-AMG has decided it read its own customers wrong. Stefan Weckbach, the performance brand’s chief executive, says AMG is going back to the V8 engines buyers love, and the first sign is a V8-powered CLE63 due to launch next year. Mercedes-Benz chief executive Ola Källenius went further in the same round of interviews, conceding the company had underestimated a loyal group of buyers.
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The reversal matters because it undoes a high-profile bet. AMG swapped the V8 in its C63 for a four-cylinder plug-in hybrid, and the car that replaced a long-running performance icon never found the audience the engineers expected. A manufacturer rarely says so in public, and rarer still is a promise to reverse course on a flagship product.
What Weckbach and Källenius actually said
Autoblog’s account of the executives’ remarks draws on an interview first published by Road & Track. In that interview, Weckbach said AMG learns from the reaction of its customers and is therefore going back to what they love, which he identified as the V8 AMGs. It is a short, unadorned statement, and it came from the executive who answers for AMG’s sales rather than from an engineer or a spokesperson. Road & Track’s own page was not readable for this report, so the remarks are cited as Autoblog relays them.
Källenius supplied the admission in plainer terms. In his words, what the company “perhaps underestimated at the time” was that “the good old V-8 crowd is a pretty good crowd.” He added that the four-cylinder approach did not bring the whole tribe of AMG buyers along. Asked about a V12, he would say only to “watch this space.” That is not a confirmation of anything, and nothing in the coverage treats it as one.
The four-cylinder C63 that missed
The car at the center of the misjudgment is the current C63, which pairs a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder with a rear-mounted electric motor, a 6.1-kilowatt-hour battery, and a combined 671 horsepower and 752 pound-feet of torque, according to Autocar’s report on the V8’s return. That is far more than the 503 horsepower of the previous C63 S with its 4.0-liter V8. Autocar says the setup failed to gain traction with customers, and that its main criticism was a lack of acoustic character.
The plan to bring the V8 back has been reported before. Autocar’s sources said in 2024 that the CLE63 would move to a V8, a shift The Drive described as unconfirmed at the time and tied to weak demand for the C63 and GLC63 hybrids, along with dealer concern that a four-cylinder CLE63 above the six-cylinder CLE53 would confuse buyers. What changed is that the people running the company now say so on the record.
The commercial stakes explain the candor. Autocar’s report says the C63 is AMG’s best-selling model and that its sales dropped significantly after the switch to four cylinders, at a time when AMG chairman Michael Schiebe has set a goal of lifting annual sales from 140,000 to 200,000. The same report describes the new V8 as an all-new mild-hybrid design reportedly based on AMG’s twin-turbo 4.0-liter architecture, with a flat-plane crankshaft that sharpens throttle response, and says AMG plans an artificial sound generator to recreate the traditional V8 soundtrack.
The CLE63 and what else the V8 could return to
Weckbach confirmed the CLE63 will carry a V8, with a launch planned for next year. The earlier reporting from Motor1 said the engine would be a twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter with mild-hybrid assistance making up to 585 horsepower, roughly 100 less than the 671 expected from the hybrid. Those figures are the earlier reports and are not confirmed by Mercedes, which did not comment on them when asked.
Beyond the coupe, the executives talked about the G-Class, where Weckbach said the next generation is being worked on and will stay a G-Class without losing its soul. The coverage does not confirm a V8 G-Class, and it does not confirm a V12, so those remain open questions rather than product announcements.
For buyers the sensible reading is modest. The CLE63’s V8 is confirmed by an AMG chief executive and the launch year is stated, while the rest of the specification is reported rather than announced. Autocar’s unnamed sources have said the V8 will spread to other AMG models, including a revised C63, but the executive remarks relayed by Autoblog do not confirm that. Shoppers weighing the current hybrid C63 should therefore treat any future engine change as unannounced, and should expect specifications, pricing and exact timing to come from Mercedes-AMG itself.
The admission still stands out, because carmakers seldom concede that a flagship decision misread the people who buy the cars. Companies usually frame a reversal as a plan that was always coming; this one was framed as a lesson learned from customers.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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