• 

  Carparazzi caught the Black Series test car but no-one knows yet if the four-door sedan will make it to production, or if it's just serving as a test mule. Photo Gallery

A factory Benz with bolt-on body bits that could have come from a western suburbs chop shop can only mean one thing...

... it's time to go back to black at the AMG hotrod shop. Work is well underway in Germany on a C63 Black Series car intended to outrun the rival BMW M3 and Audi S4 later this year, with more than 420 kiloWatts to be fed through the same seven-speed dry-clutch automatic gearbox already in use at AMG.

But Black cars are focussed on weight loss as much as power gains, which points to extensive use of carbon fibre and a more exotic treatment for the pumped-out body bits needed to cover the giant wheels on the go-faster Benz.

Carparazzi caught the Black Series test car but no-one knows yet if the four-door sedan will make it to production, or if it's just serving as a test mule.  Every previous Black Series cars has been built up from a two-door body, starting with the compact CLK and including the flagship SL roadster, but... C63 AMG black series coupe Will the black beast be a sedan or a coupe? Perhaps both?

AMG boss Ola Kallenius has hinted about two upcoming Black Series cars and Carparazzi has also caught the C63 upgrade as a two-door coupe. The Black test car is shown emerging from Mercedes-Benz's technical development centre during handling runs at the Nurburgring test course.

Just like the four-door prototype, the latest C-Class coupe has been slapped with much wider wheel arches and also looks to be sitting a little closer to the ground with a four-pipe exhaust system.