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The BMW M3 has long been the benchmark by which all other luxury performance cars are measured. But what do you do when cars come along that just blow away the hallowed M3? After all, when you compare two performance cars, it’s important to make sure you are comparing apples to apples. Well, you find two blindingly fast V8 “apples” that could both kick the snot out of an M3, and you compare them against each other on the track.
That is just what our friends at Edmunds Inside Line did with the 2011 Cadillac CTS-V and the Mercedes C63 AMG. Our dog in this fight, the supercharged LSA-powered CTS-V, churns out 556 horsepower, while the Mercedes C63 AMG is powered by a 6.2L V8 with 481 horsepower. Despite the notable power difference, these two cars are pretty much dead even in performance. The guys at Inside Line wrung out identical 0-60 times from the CTS-V and the AMG at 4.2 seconds for both, and in the quarter mile the CTS-V’s 77 horsepower advantage is only good for one-tenth of a second over the Mercedes. The “V” ran a 12.2 at 117.5 MPH, and the AMG came in barely behind at a 12.3 at 116.3 MPH.
In the handling tests, it was more of the same, with the CTS-V just barely edging out the AMG in every competition. All in all, it’s an extremely close competition; that is until you consider the CTS-V is considerably less expensive than the AMG. The Mercedes is very fast and very cool, but we like our “apples” of the supercharged LSX variety.
