Mercedes-Benz World review: a must-stop for the car enthusiast

There is a huge variety of ways cars hold people’s interest.  You’ve got the historians, the drivers, those interested in motorsports, and of course vast technical topics to explore. And then there sub-categories – within driving you’ve got drifting, circuit racing, offroading and more.

Mercedes-Benz World in Weybridge, UK caters to all the above, and more.  I would have visited had it only offered an array of exotic Mercedes to look at, let alone various F1 cars.  But add in the driving experiences and it was an absolute must, especially as entry to wander around is free.

But driving isn’t enough.  I opted for the thirty-minute Mid Week AMG C63 Experience for 120 UKP.  We turned up half an hour beforehand as per instructions, and were booked in by friendly staff, and I’m not just saying that, everyone we interacted with at the World was very professional.  The only minor glitch was my daughter’s Australian provisional licence bemusing three of them, but they decided – correctly – it was a full licence. Clearly no GLS (Graduated Licence System) in the UK!

Once the admin had been done I was shown to the driver’s seat of a 2025 AMG C63, the four-cylinder turbo, hybrid all-wheel-drive version.  My daughter hopped in the back, an instructor in the front and I adjusted my seating position – the instructor asking if I usually braked with my left foot, and the answer to that was yes.  Observant and interesting, I thought! We also didn’t need to wear helmets or long-sleeved attire, and for an additional fee you can have a passenger in the back. The video is another extra fee – more on than later.

I knew the program started with some 0-100km/h or so sprints, but that held no interest for me so I asked if we could spend our time only on the circuit and drift circle, to which the instructor instantly agreed. Brilliant!

So off to the circuit and I began my first lap.  It’s a handling circuit with a mix of tight corners joined by a short back straight, and it’s much narrower than a racetrack but you still can position the car for a racing line. Looking at the video later my first lap was around 1.04, and the last 46 seconds so it’s not a long track, but that’s fine, I only had six laps and that was omitting the drag exercise, so you don’t want a big complex track if you’ve got less than ten minutes on the circuit. It’s no Spa or Nurburgring, but I am very confident any driver would enjoy the circuit and the challenge it presents. Your driver coach will help – mine didn’t offer any suggestions, which I discovered during the cooldown lap meant he was happy with what I was doing. Still, I’m sure there would have been some improvements, however minor.

The drift circle is great fun and a rare occasion to practice drifting. It’s a very low-grip surface, so doesn’t represent a real racetrack, and it’s sloped inwards which makes drifting easier, allows the water to drain, and helps keep the cars on the circuit. Nevertheless, it is perhaps one of the best ways I’ve seen in the world to introduce a driver to the gentle art of drifting, using the throttle to control the car’s angle and the steering to keep the car going where you want it to go. Even for the experienced it’s great fun, and you can add a challenge of different drift angles. The current C63 has a very limited steering lock so you have to drift shallow, but it doesn’t hurt for power. I started in Drift Mode, in rear drive only and fairly quickly managed a full lap sideways. Then the instructor suggested I try drifting in AWD, so I thought why not, how hard can it be?

I got my answer a couple of spins later. I honestly thought AWD would be easier, but it isn’t! You need a much, much greater angle, and you can pull the car back from nearly ninety degrees – I think the slope helps there. I couldn’t rewire my brain to AWD drift mode before the session was up and got nowhere near a full lap, so of course now I want to go back!

A big concern of novice performance drivers is crashing into another car, or just holding someone else up. At Mercedes-Benz World neither are a problem as in effect you’re alone on drift or circuit track, as there’s just one other car on either at any time, and you never really get close. You would find it hard to get a similar experience with so few other cars anywhere else, and that is another reason why the Driving Experiences are perfect for the inexperienced. The Drift Circle also teaches another important skill; locking the brakes when you spin, which is something everyone needs to practice. Unfortunately, the Cricle necessarily has high-traction surfaces on the outside and inside, so if you don’t do that there is no penalty, so a negative side effect is ‘teaching’ the wrong reaction in the event of a spin.

Below this article is a video of a circuit lap and a drift circle lap. As you can see, and hear, the cars may be 2025 but the technology is not; awful wind noise, poor camera setup and you get the result delivered on archaic USB sticks which aside from not being accessible to smartphones are a security risk for personal computers. My video editor couldn’t fix the audio, and of course it couldn’t re-centre the in-car camera on the driver so the steering wheel is visible. I think the AV setup is the weakest part of the Driving Experience by far.

That said, I would definitely recommend Mercedes-Benz World for a casual visit, and also the Driving Experiences. Even the cafe is good value and serves coffee nearly worthy of Melbourne! I can’t think of anywhere else you’d get such a valuable, fun and value for money experience.