Weather was bad at car meet then a Mercedes that's a 1-of-4 in America pulled up and brightened everyone's day

A rare Mercedes CLS 63 AMG pulled up at a car meet, and people just went crazy for it.

Partly because it was a rainy and overcast day, and the car brightened it up.

But mostly because this vehicle is rare in the United States.

And there’s a very good reason why.

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Why this Mercedes is so rare in the US

That kind of doesn’t happen anymore, but until recently, Mercedes used to produce an AMG version for just about every model in its lineup.

Most of those were 63 variants, which in the olden days meant the engine was a 6.2-liter V8.

The vehicle we see in the clip shared to Instagram by 911wfo is a CLS 63 AMG shooting brake.

The Mercedes CLS 63 AMG was sold in the US – about 1,200 examples in total – but the shooting brake variant wasn’t.

This means that the high-performance sedan in the video was imported, and there are only four in the country.

Back when the name ’63’ was more than just a symbol

These days, Mercedes names don’t mean much of anything anymore, but until about 10-15 years ago, they indicated the size of the engine.

Any Mercedes named ‘320’, for example, had a 3.2-liter engine, and a 400 would’ve been a 4.0-liter car, and so on and so forth.

The only exception – for some reason – was the iconic ’63’ model, which was actually powered by a 6.2-liter, not a 6.3-liter engine.

This began changing in the early 2010s, mostly because that marked the beginning of the downsizing era.

Most ’63’ models now, for example, use 4.0-liter units, and the CLS 53 has a 3.0-liter powertrain.

Mercedes even replaced one of its V8 engines with a turbocharged four-cylinder unit that was even more powerful, even though it was literally half as big as its predecessor.

Now that’s changing again, though.

Mostly because customers, well, they just want V8s.