THERE was a time not that long ago when BMW’s M3 was universally regarded as the benchmark sports sedan. Oh, how times have changed.

Mercedes-Benz’s skunkworks, AMG, took this personally and developed an absolute beast of a rival for the M3, the W205 C63.

And being a bunch of lead-footed Australians, we were only given access to the most potent C63 of them all, the S.

The rest is history. The C63 S has reset the benchmark, which makes its first facelift a very, very interesting case study.

How much does Mercedes-AMG tweak an already winning formula? Not much apparently, but that’s very good news. Read on to find out why.