Is there such thing as a hardcore Mercedes performance community?

My son recently bought a 2011 Mercedes C63 AMG (with a little help from moi to get borrowing privileges) and it's really a blast. 6.3 liter V8 power and noise. Handling, ergonomics, just a great package. Kind of like the M3s brother who went to a fancier school. I also like how it's something of a q-ship. Anonymous gray sedan that just happens to have 450 HP. 

But where's the community? Have we bought a ticket to snobville? I've had experiences with a dozen or more active car communities revolving around things like track days, vintage racing, BMWs, Volvos, Corvairs, kit cars, Porsches, et cetera. There's always been that element that welcomes you based on your enthusiasm and passion, not just where your car sits in the pecking order. I'm a big fan of both prewar Mercedes F1 cars and their recent efforts in the same arena. But so far I'm just not finding that group of Mercedes-focused motorheads who aren't just lifestyle fetishists.

Any thoughts? 

Lol yeah man,  Mercedes forums are hard to like because of the old men being snobs and purist. I'll say that Mbworld and benzworld have the best model specific forum for the w204 c63. Lots of people mod them crazy but you'll need deeper pockets. If you want to find younger less bougie folks, look for groups.  I rarely post on the forums or even share my cars in them. FB or here only. 

What year is it?  Any packages? 

In reply to yupididit :

2011. 70k miles. Very clean - like new. No special packages. I checked the motor # and it's post-headbolt-issue. I don't want to encourage my son to track it. Take good care of it and it should hold its value well as one of the last N/A V8s. It would be cool if we could find some chill people more like the vintage folks that I normally hang out with whom we could do the Sunday coffee-followed by a nice blatt in the hills occasionally. 

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

Oh I know some folks to refer you to for that kind of stuff. Do either of you have IG?

Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:

Kind of like the M3s brother who went to a fancier school.

As an owner of the relevant M3, I love you for this description.  Spot-on!

I feel like a lot of automatic-only, luxury-forward performance cars have the same problem: they tend to be bought mainly by non-enthusiasts who value them for little more than their combination of luxury and speed.  They rarely love the car for its deeper, unique virtues; they're only in it as long as it's the fastest/fanciest thing they can afford, and the moment that changes, they're out.

That might be less true of the W204 as time passes.  Anyone still rocking the NA V8 with aging-MB upkeep concerns is doing it for a reason.  I still would never expect as big/good a community for it as for the other interests you mentioned, but there should be some folks somewhere.  As painful as it is for me to say this (I hate social media with a fiery passion), yupididit's recommendation to look to FB is probably the best call.

Good hunting, and cheers to your (and your son's) fine taste in automobiles!

I've been racing a (W201) 190E 2.3-16 for over ten years now. There is a small community of people doing track stuff with these cars and the W124 E-class. You don't see many other Benzes getting driven hard on track.

There are some Facebook groups that might be good places to start:

190 Revolution: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2433271940

Modified Mercs: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1621330631455994

The 6.2L M156 sounds so  good. I hope to see you/him have good long term reliability out of it. The older 5.4L M113 has proven to be much more reliable than the car it's packaged in.

I'm envious of you at least starting with a performance Benz. Finding anybody who's done performance mods on the W116 chassis is much more difficult!

Thanks for the input. My son did the research and found us a good deal. There has to be similar minds out there. We've just got to do our diligence

There are a couple Facebook groups dedicated to the Mercedes performance community. As LanEvo said, Modified Mercs and the like. There are a few other good ones that I know of, but they are more W201/W124 oriented. This might not apply to the later models, but one thing I have noticed is that there seems to be a lot more down to earth Mercedes enthusiasts in eastern Europe and Scandinavia. The advantage with FB is that the posts get translated. The downside is that the older posts are difficult to search.