Comparison Tests
From the January 2016 issue
Gather ’round the fire, folks, and let Uncle Car and Driver tell you a little story. Some people might call it a fable or a fairy tale, but there ain’t fairies in this tale or brownies or sprites, not even a wisecracking woodland gnome. Where were we? Right, way back in the mists of time known as the 1920s, before interstate highways and chairs that give massages, there was a land known as the Irish Hills.
Now, that name is what fancier folks might call a misnomer, because these hills weren’t in Ireland and, truth be told, the hills really weren’t much in the way of hills, either. No, those hills were in Michigan, where any old lump is called a hill. Along U.S. Route 12, once the trail that connected Detroit and Chicago, there lived a farmer named Edward Kelly whose land included part, but not all, of Brighton Hill. In about 1924, the Michigan Observation Company (MOC) decided it would build an observation tower on that hill, because, well, because Netflix hadn’t yet been invented. The evil MOC decided to cash in on the tourists with this roadside attraction. The good Mr. Kelly was not at all pleased, but the MOC built its 50-foot tower anyway, mere feet from his property line.
So Kelly built his own damn tower, of similar design, right next to it. But Kelly’s was 60 feet tall. It would come to be known as the Spite Tower. [Are we going to be mentioning the vehicles at any point in this comparison test?—Ed.]
Well, that wouldn’t do at all, said the MOC. It was not about to lose a measuring contest to Kelly and added 14 feet to the top of its tower. Possibly you saw this coming, but Kelly then added four feet to the top of his tower, putting it even with the MOC’s.
It wasn’t until the MOC threatened to tear down its tower and build a much taller steel structure that Kelly called a truce. And the people rejoiced in this battle of the towers. Then the interstate came and sucked all the tourists away from the Irish Hills and its cheesy attractions. The towers were eventually joined and ringed by a half-bit miniature-golf course. They now sit, stained and boarded up with their observation decks removed, a last-ditch effort to try to save them from the wrecking ball by making them nominally weatherproof until the current owner could raise the $300,000 it would take to repair them.
We’re not implying that the BMW X6 M and the Mercedes-AMG GLE63 S Coupe are in any way like those two towers. For one, both vehicles were, in our testing, watertight and structurally sound. To see the towers as an allegory for these two hot-rodded coupe-ish SUV thingamabobs would be to imply that German carmakers are in a constant and sometimes futile measuring contest, caring only about one-upping each other. And that can’t be true because, um, these two vehicles are both made in the United States.
Mercedes started this whole “four-door coupe” silliness with its CLS sedan, and was followed quickly by BMW and its two four-door coupes. BMW was the first to take the basic concept to new heights of absurdity with its X6. And it was Mercedes that fired back with the large bar of soap known as the GLE Coupe. And look at where this has gotten us: Testing 5200-plus-pound performance vehicles that ride on massive, sticky summer tires and provide precious little of the utility of an SUV with precious little of the fun of a proper performance car. It’s a cautionary tale.
But here they are nonetheless. A second-generation snub-nosed BMW X6 M, which pumps out 567 horsepower from its twin-turbocharged 4.4-liter V-8, performs astonishing feats on the test track and looks from the rear-three-quarters view like a rat with no tail.
Fresh this year is the GLE Coupe, a GLE SUV made less practical. Predictably, its 5.5-liter twin-turbo V-8 makes 10 more horsepower than the X6 M’s engine, because, nyah, nyah, nyah, ours is bigger. Viewed directly from the rear, it looks like a sad robot with a chrome unibrow.
So what, pray-tell, constitutes a win in this segment of $100K-plus high-performance, low-utility parade floats? Good question. Let’s find out together.
