A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the new Ford Mustang - oppressively brutal and with all the finesse of a swinging brick.

As the good ol’ boys from the Brickyard at Indianapolis Speedway would manifestly have it: "There ain’t no substitute for cubes".

Sadly, for most, "cubes" have been substituted mostly by hybrids or small bore motors - many from Japan, which the Americans are importing by the million, as their indigenous car builders know to their cost, only too well. Cubes pretty much went out of style when gasoline became as expensive as Chablis. Heaven forefend, some of our American cousins are even swopping their big utes for diesel cars even though they pay less than half for fuel than we poor saps do over here in Europe. The Mustangs, Corvettes and Camaros of this age are, in these bear-hugging and strapped times, for a very abridged number of punters.

Yet, for those who at any cost love to puree their Pirellis or mangle their Michelins, only to spend hours at the pumps watching their salaries wizz away in a frenzied digital blur, there are still some fine dipsomaniac dinosaurs out there, albeit contemporary ones - if that makes sense. And you don’t have to go to the USA to find them, nor do you need to seek out preposterously styled mid-engined million pound and often pointless - except to Arabs - supercars in which to procure such donkeys.

Germany’s a good place to start. Some say that the Germans lack irony and that for them a custard pie is the height of satire; make that a well-aimed Schwarzwalder kuchen. For Germans the only thing funnier than a box set of Mr Bean DVDs is a drawn out lavatory and flatulence joke.

Yet I say they do jollity in spades - they just have discordant ways of displaying it. One of their channels for hilarity can be found in some of their discreetly brutal cars. BMW’s M range and Audi’s family of RS cars - equally potent but lacking in total lunacy courtesy of safe but fun-deadening Quattro four-wheel-drive systems.

Now, madder than a bag of snakes, Mercedes-Benz bring the C63 AMG Coupe Edition with performance package plus to the party - my office last week. Billed as a 6.3 litre (it actually displaces 6208 cc), this 32 valve V8, which, with the optional AMG driver’s performance package - forged pistons, newly-developed con rods and crankshaft - adds 30bhp to raise the total to a mighty 487 very amusing German horses. The package also raises the top speed to a limited but more than adequate 175mph. Four gearbox settings for seven speeds range from comfort to barking mad. Dare to switch off the traction control and the chances are you’ll be making 360s every time you press the loud - very loud - pedal.

Shoehorning this ungodly whopper of a motor into such a relatively diminutive and prepossessing coupe body is an act of frivolous, imprudent and wantonly extrinsic irresponsibility from those crazy engineers at Mercedes-Benz. An absolute disgrace. Pah, in a week at the wheel I managed a negligible 13.9mpg.

I’m probably old enough to know better but d’you know what? I absolutely loved every minute in this hilarious and irrelevant Stuttgart muscle car.

From £57,165. As driven by Zog £71,400.