Fans of the egg-faced volte-face will be smirking into their coffee mugs this week at the news that Mercedes-AMG’s incoming CLE 63 coupé is to get not four, not six but eight cylinders.

What’s more, when the current C63 saloon and estate come in for their mid-life refresh next year, they too will become available with AMG’s new mild-hybrid V8 set-up.

This was never the plan. Mercedes wanted – and I use that word loosely – the 2.0-litre four-pot M139 to succeed the C63’s 4.0-litre V8 M177 full- stop and threw in punchy electrical assistance to sweeten the deal. The diddy M139 would be marketed on the might of its world-beating specific output and its Formula 1 technology.

In fairness, from a purely logical standpoint, this wasn’t an insane idea. The M139’s specific output in the current C63 is 236bhp per litre. It’s a snort-inducing stat that in years gone by was attainable only if you left an RB26DETT unattended in a tobacco-perfumed workshop in Chiba Prefecture. 

It’s an awesome feat of engineering in a road car with Apple CarPlay and a big boot, that will tolerate both freezing starts in Siberia and being ragged senseless in bitumen-melting heat on a Saudi expressway.

So the M139 is special. And expensive. The block is chill-cast, there are lots of forged bits and it’s hand-assembled. If, when this engine surfaced in the A45 hatch in 2019, you had told me there was a 90sec delay when you started the car to allow time for warm water to be pumped around the block and tolerances to sweeten up, DTM-style, I might actually have believed you.

But the M139 just isn’t the right donkey for the C63. Not at this moment. Or possibly ever.

Sales have been dismal. PR-wise, it has been a disaster. Electrification has also made the car shockingly porky. Perhaps BMW could have got away with such a dramatic downsizing for the mainstay of its M portfolio, because the M3 has never been quite as ‘engine first, chassis second’ as the C63, and of course there is precedent in the E30. 

Then again, perhaps not. To me, the i8 will always be a massively underappreciated left-field gem, and you have to imagine BMW would have sold a damn sight more if, instead of a Mini triple, it had squeezed an 8000rpm six into that sci-fi body.

Thus die Kehrtwende – the U-turn. AMG is now choreographing a juicy one. They happen from time to time when a manufacturer pushes ill-advised tech (it always makes sense on paper) onto a product that is, in certain ways, property of the card-carrying owner-base – if not in terms of intellectual property then spiritually.

Porsche once tried this by making the 911 GT3 PDK-only. GT division boss Andreas Preuninger said something about everyone at Porsche loving to shift gears manually but loving being fastest ‘even more’. 

True, the PDK is military-grade in its ability to pop off a 9000rpm upshift. But given the driver-centric bent of the GT3 and the fact even the prior manual model could blow your socks off, speed really wasn’t everything (as Preuninger well knew). 

A stink was duly kicked up. Values of the limited, manual-only 911 R touching a million quid – true madness – also focused minds in Stuttgart. So Porsche did the decent thing and reintroduced the manual.

At this point, you’re probably expecting me to tell you that barely any of us bought these manual GT3s, yet since its rehabilitation, the three-pedal model has sold well. It will be a similar story with any V8-engined C63, and especially the CLE, with its AMG-stuff-of- nightmares aesthetic to match the woofle.

Of course, disruptiveness often works. Four- wheel drive for the M3? Superb. Turbocharging the 911 Carrera? Unexpectedly good. Paddles in mid-engined Ferraris? Great, eventually. V10 in an Audi wagon? Er, yeah, why the hell not.

As for what’s next, it depends on what you class as a U-turn. The Emira was meant to have a short run as the final oil-fired Lotus but now a hybrid is mooted. Bentley is another that has pushed back plans to go fully electric and now is investing in V8-hybrid powertrains.

Porsche, feeling the heat of turgid Taycan sales, is committing up to €800m to ICE and PHEV development. But none of these are gratifying to witness, just evidence of an amazing industry wrestling with a regulatory minefield littered with global inconsistencies and customers who understandably can’t make up their mind. Sticking the boot in isn’t cricket.

However, prematurely relieving an iconic model of its lifeforce or stripping one of the world’s totemic driver’s cars of its third pedal? Risible. We therefore welcome die Kehrtwende.