The Unholy Alliance: M3 Touring v C63 Estate v Ioniq 5 N

So I decided to try and forget the entire history of the C63 and assess this car on its own merits, not how it compares to its antecedents. And the only conclusion you can draw is that Mercedes has done a profoundly impressive job at trying to engineer its way out of the car’s self-imposed limitations: that engine and the simply enormous mass of the car to which it is attached.

The powertrain is smooth, has an invigorating voice in the upper reaches of its rev range and thanks to the sledgehammer whack in the back provided by its hybrid drive and a chassis capable of dumping the lot on mother earth in an instant, gets out of the blocks like no other estate car I’ve driven. I had to do some standing start getaways for the video we’ll soon post on YouTube and I’d had enough after just two. Bizarre though it sounds, that 3.4sec 0-62mph claim actually seems like a considerable underestimate.

It’s the same in the corners: it’s not so much what it does that captures your attention, but what it does given what it’s got with which to do it. In this case, a kerbweight of 2115kg. Torque vectoring and four-wheel steer work wonders in persuading it to change direction as fast as possible and it never feels less than absolutely secure. I’m sure that in the right environment it would drift for Germany too. You can see absolutely how its engineers must have considered they’d done a really good job with it because, for a four-cylinder estate car with precious little boot weighing over 2.1 tonnes, they have. Whether it should have ever been allowed to get anywhere near that state in the first place is, of course, another question entirely. Let alone whether the result can credibly command the six-figure sum asked for it.

Inside there is clearly the highest quality interior of the three, with a touchscreen that’s easier than most, seats that feels terrible on first acquaintance but prove to be brilliantly supportive on a long run and long distance comfort aided by impressive ride quality and harmed only by the engine’s rather flat blare under gentle acceleration at modest crankshaft speeds. There is so much that is good about this car it’s important for it not to become obscured behind such a courageous choice of powertrain.

Of course the BMW has no such issues. A straight-six motor, boosted only by a pair of turbochargers, spreading their power to all four wheels. No hybrid drive, no compromised boot space and no two-tonne plus mass. Lovely.

Except it wasn’t long ago, perhaps indeed a period of time as easily measured in months as years when we looked upon the 1865kg weight of the then new M3 Touring with something approaching bemused horror. With a couple of adults installed you have a two-tonne 3 Series right there. How could that possibly have been allowed to happen? It shows how times, and our perspectives have changed. This needlessly, at times almost gratuitously overweight machine is now, and by a huge margin, the lightest car here.

And, goodness me, doesn’t it feel it. For a start the gap in performance to the other two is nothing like that suggested by the 113bhp horsepower deficit to the Hyundai and the 143 ponies it’s missing relative to the Merc. And the simple and important point to make here is that it’s actually as fast as anyone could ever want to make a small estate car go. Not once in our day together did I get back into the BMW, roar up the road and feel somehow shortchanged by the lack of shove. The thought is absurd.

What I did feel, and appreciate every single time I got into it was the silken shove of the straight-six, its glorious voice and the kind of throttle response when you put your foot down that eases you into the majesty of the experience to come, rather than smacking you in the face with it. Its gearbox is a straightforward ZF slusher, subjectively slower than the wet clutch auto used by the Mercedes but quick enough and suffering not at all for having one fewer ratio.

What’s interesting is that you’d expect that what it might lose to the C63 in a straight line it would more than make up in the corners; but in fact it’s a closer contest than you might think. Who knows which has the highest potential apex speed, for both are quick enough for the limitation to be not tyre adhesion but what constitutes a socially acceptable way of behaving on a public road. I’d say the Benz was no less precise or poised either. So what’s left is that little thing we testers call ‘feel’, and, bluntly, the BMW has more of it. It’s just a sense you get of being immediately more at home with the way the car responds to your instructions. Whether required or not, it helps foster confidence, encouraging you to push on that bit harder, that bit sooner. In other words, to have more fun.

There’s little between them inside. The C63 cabin has the higher perceived quality and a more easily understood infotainment system. But the haptic controls on its steering wheel are poor and once you’ve worked out how to work the BMW’s interface, it’s pretty easy too. In the back there’s similar head and leg room, leaving the real difference to be found in the boot. The M3’s is not large, not much bigger than that of a family hatch to be honest, but it is sensibly shaped and exactly what you’d expect from this kind of car.

What, then, of the Hyundai? You can tell at once that this is a car built down to an entirely different price point: you can tell it from the manual operation of the seats to the quality of the materials on the inside. Which may or may not be seen as a fair trade off for a family car with, frankly, laughably more room inside than those it finds itself up against today. EVs have come in for a lot of criticism, but you can’t knock the sprawling space provided in the back, nor the comparatively cavernous boot.

But that’s not really what we’re here to talk about. Hyundai’s challenge has been to take a car weighing 120kg more than even the Mercedes, with an all-electric powertrain, and somehow convince the world the result is fun to drive. Because if it isn’t, given its price and unimpressive range (even if it will charge very quickly at the right charge point), there really is no other point to it.

And you cannot fault Hyundai’s efforts. For a start there’s all that power – 641bhp in 10 second bursts on ‘overboost’, a trifling 601bhp the rest of the time. There’s the suspension drop relative to a normal Ioniq 5, and those voluptuously flared arches too. There are massive 21in wheels, fat tyres and a gloss black diffuser too. Relative to the regular Ioniq 5 its structure has more spot welds to make it stiffer, it has torque vectoring and an electronically controlled limited-slip differential at the rear.

The torque split between the axle can be varied by either car or its driver and if you choose the maximum amount of regenerative braking, there’s enough of that on entry to influence line of attack too. The diff itself has three settings, the steering and suspension three more too. I could go on but you get the idea: Hyundai has thrown the kitchen sink, toaster and dishwasher at this car.

But I can’t not mention its frankly bizarre N e-Shift function, found hiding away in some sub menu on the not very intuitive touchscreen. At once a noise sounding not at all unlike a turbocharged four-cylinder motor fills the cabin, while a rev-counter appears on the dash. It’s remarkably convincing but that’s just the start. The paddles, used until now to increase or decrease the amount of brake regen, suddenly command ‘gears’. It has eight of them, each with their own carefully curated torque and response curves and a redline of 8000rpm. Of course it doesn’t have any of these things, but it’s not just good enough to fool your passengers, I reckon if you put someone behind the wheel with the car in this mode, if he or she had no idea what actually provided this car’s power, there’s a better than evens chance you’d fool them too. Hell, I went everywhere in this mode on the mountain and was more than willing to suspend my disbelief as I did. I found myself having, well there’s no other word for it, fun.

The next play – and play it most certainly is – is surely to provide an entire back catalogue of engine sounds, or at least the desirable ones: imagine being able to swap between a big banger V8, howling flat-six and symphonic V12 according to your mood. In a world where even the World Champion spends as much time playing Esports as driving his F1 car, the gap between perception and reality blurs ever more, and this is just one not very serious but rather enjoyable step along the path.

What it can’t do is make the car a hoot to drive in the corners. It has all the tricks, a centre of gravity lower than a stick of gum tossed onto the tarmac, but while it has the grip, this is an occasion where feeling like you’re stuck in a computer game is not such a great thing. On paper it does everything right, or very close to it, but in reality that connection between man and machine is hard to find. It’s a car that might surprise you with its fluency across a tough road, it might very well impress you too. But will it also do that immeasurably harder thing and make you love it? Not from where I was sitting.

I’m not going to draw out the conclusion for long because, if I’ve done my job at all, you’ll know the BMW wins, and probably that the Hyundai beats the Mercedes into second place too, and would even if there weren’t a £36k gulf between them. The M3 is the best car here, the i5N the most surprising and, in certain ways the most impressive, certainly relative to expectations, and the C63 an entire powertrain rethink between it and the greatness that seems to lurk deep within its depths.

But perhaps none of that is what matters most here: truth is I’d have a slightly slower but far cheaper, more comfortable and barely less entertaining M340i than the M3, and any previous C63 over this one. Hercules would be proud of the efforts the Hyundai makes to mitigate, gloss over and divert your attention from the fact that EVs just don’t make great sporting cars, at least not yet.

There is something to be liked about all these cars here but were you to ask me which I’d recommend, you might find me struggling to answer. Today this is the state of the fast family car art, and I’d be lying if I said I found any of them ultimately convincing.

Photography by Malcolm Griffiths