The 2023 Mercedes-AMG C 43 Starts at $61,050, Gets Standard Rear-Steer

The AMG sport sedan uses an F1-inspired electric turbocharger to squeeze 402 hp and 369 lb-ft of torque from a 2.0-liter four-cylinder.

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2023 Mercedes-AMG C43
Photo: Mercedes-Benz

If you head over to Mercedes-Benz’s online configurator, you may be surprised to see that at least temporarily, there’s no AMG C 63 available for you to build. For now, the most powerful C-Class that you can order is the less extreme 2023 Mercedes-AMG C 43. It wasn’t too long ago that the baby AMG’s performance figures would have been seriously impressive and not second-best. After all, the 2023 C 43 makes 402 hp and 369 lb-ft of torque, and it’ll hit 60 mph in 4.6 seconds.

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Photo: Mercedes-Benz
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The 2023 C 43 will also cost you didn’t-that-used-to-be-C63 money, as it starts at $61,050 if you include the $1,150 destination charge. For comparison, that’s a few thousand dollars more than the 2023 BMW M340i’s starting price of $57,395 including destination. Then again, the C 43 is all-wheel drive and doesn’t offer a rear-drive version like BMW does. And the M340i also makes less power, cranking out 382 hp and 368 lb-ft of torque. On the other hand, the BMW is said to be quicker, launching from zero to 60 mph in a manufacturer-claimed 4.4 seconds.

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Another big difference between the two is the engine itself. While the M340i is powered by a 3.0-liter turbo inline-six, the Mercedes uses a 2.0-liter turbo inline-four. It’s a very fancy inline-four, though, which Mercedes says uses an electric exhaust-gas turbocharger that “is a direct derivative of the technology used by the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team and provides spontaneous response across the entire rpm range.” It also gets a belt-driven starter/generator that can give the C 43 a temporary 13-hp boost.

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Image for article titled The 2023 Mercedes-AMG C 43 Starts at $61,050, Gets Standard Rear-Steer
Photo: Mercedes-Benz

You get a good number of standard features, too, including heated front seats, a leather-wrapped steering wheel, a biometric fingerprint scanner, adaptive LED headlights, a surround-view camera system, blind spot monitoring and a windshield washer fluid heater. But the most interesting item, from a performance perspective, is the standard rear-steer system, which should make the C 43 both more agile and easier to park.

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Upgrade from the base Premium trim to the $62,700 Pinnacle trim, and you get augmented reality navigation, a head-up display, a Burmeister sound system and wireless charging. Both versions are now on sale, so there’s no need to place an order and wait until next year for deliveries to begin.

Image for article titled The 2023 Mercedes-AMG C 43 Starts at $61,050, Gets Standard Rear-Steer
Photo: Mercedes-Benz