Honestly now: take a look at the achingly beautiful AMG GT, and tell me you need a wordy, nerdy review to convince you whether or not you want one.
I don't know why, but Mercedes cars have always given me the impression that they're classy, comfy, and capable things. Despite all their success in motorsports, boy racer things like stripes and wings just never seemed to suit their cars. And it's for this reason that I much, much prefer the older, classier AMG GT S to the overbearing GT R and Black Series. Tasteless bits like gouged out bonnets, IKEA aero, and a boy racer paint job just ruin this shape, and decals feel like straight up vandalism in my eyes. I even showed up to this week's meet without a livery—It's that good.
Yes, it's got a downsized engine. Yes, it's got twin turbos. Yes, it produces less power, and around most tracks, it's slower than the SLS AMG it succeeds. Yes, it needs a hint of a short shift to accelerate its best. But take this thing to redline gear after gear, and tell me that you care about a few hundredths on a stopwatch. Wrangle this surprisingly balanced feeling 1,570kg (3,461lbs) package into the apex of a corner, and tell me you'd rather be in an SLS. Park it, and tell me you can walk away without taking at least a look back thinking, "daaaaaamn!"
The AMG GT S might not be lightweight sports car agile, and it's certainly not the kind of car that tries to hide its heft—this is a big, heavy car that feels big and heavy all the time. But, I think it almost uses its heft and luxobarge status to demand a certain level of respect and reverence from its driver, solely as leverage to surprise them with athleticism when push comes to shove. Look, I'm not the best driver out there. Sometimes I carry too much speed into a corner, and miss an apex. Doesn't help that Nismo inadvertently set boost and slipstream to "Strong" in his GTS lobby with the alien McEwen among the grid. In those dire situations, the AMG GT puts on a fierce face of a pissed off mob boss, but then takes care of me like I'm its own flesh and blood, bending physics with pure muscle and unseen influence alike to make sure no harm comes my way. It has an uncanny ability to rotate itself almost like a swivel chair deep into a corner, where most cars would have evaporated all their front rubber, and then offer a frantic powerslide to its driver to exit the turn. It's plenty capable, with almost an idiot proof quality to it, but you know what? It never feels like a punching bag that can be taken for granted. It commands respect both from its driver and those around it. It's safe, endless theatre, almost like a roller coaster ride.
Outside of those "AMG help!" moments? The car behaves incredibly neutral. The 4.0L V8 may now be twin turbocharged, but I would've never guessed it without the game's boost gauge: the powerband just feels solid in the low and mid range, progressive throughout its rev band, satisfying to rev out, and barks out a tidal wave of sound that would make grown men weak in their knees. Weight distribution is slightly rear biased at 47:53 thanks to the cab back design of the car and its transaxle layout, but despite the front being the lighter end, it's the thinner, 265mm front tyres that will give up first as a hard stop before the 295mm rear tyres get into any real danger... unless of course, the driver buries their right foot in a low gear without TCS. No amount of engineering sorcery will save an idiot from that. On a "clean", "scientific" racetrack such as Suzuka, I get this very distinct feeling of utter chaos happening underneath the car, with the electronic dampers and rear steer systems scrambling to salvage or conjure up grip from out of thin air to shut the complaining tyres up, while the car almost seems to lay a thick carpet over it all to assure me that everything is fine. This isn't a sports car I want to push to find the bleeding edge of and romanticise about "being as one at the limits" with, so that's mostly fine as long as the car behaves, which it very much does. On a road less pretty like Bathurst and the Nordschleife, though? All of that just melts away, and the car would almost blend into the background of a mental zen if not for the respect that 502HP and 1,570kg passively demands. It just feels incredibly natural and neutral, in spite of its battleship mass and firepower, which in itself is a feat of engineering; after all, sometimes the best sign that you've done an impeccable job is if your customer doesn't notice a thing.
The Safety Car version of the GT S is a bit of a peculiar one. I've previously said that the Safety Car and Base Car perform identical to one another, but upon spending more time with the cars, I've come to see that that isn't the case. The SC has Type A front, side, rear, and wing options of the BC applied by default, and only the wing can be removed. As a result, the SC has just a hint more downforce than the BC, up from 40/60 to 60/60 F/R, neither adjustable by default. While the BC sports very fitting Titanium twin 5–spoke wheels, the SC instead has black forged cross–spoke wheels, and to my knowledge, this is the only instance of an option wheel being fitted on a variation of a car, and it's so, so cool to see. I just wish there was an option to swap wheels between both cars if they've gone through all that effort to scan the wheels!
Despite sporting no discernible difference on the settings sheets aside from the slightly different downforce, the BC and SC drive notably different on a track; the SC is just a tad bit more eager to bite in to hunt an apex, but at the cost of being the same bit more tail happy on corner exit. It might be easy to point to the increased front downforce for this difference in behaviour, but said difference becomes apparent at speeds as middling as 120km/h (75mph). I've even tried matching downforce numbers on both cars via aftermarket parts, but I still couldn't get their PP values to align. It seems like there are more changes beyond visible numbers made to the two cars, but for what reason? I couldn't tell you.
Whichever AMG GT you go for, though, it's exactly what it says on the tin: an excruciatingly beautiful GT car with on–track capabilities belying its unshakable demeanour, spec sheet, and category. In short, it's a "Sleeper and a Keeper", to borrow Baron's catchphrase. But, beyond its tangible hardware, the AMG GT S scores straight tens in the emotional checklist as well—It makes its driver feel all the right, magical things a car lover looks for in a car, and while that's something that's impossible to put into words, it's very much a sure sign that the folks at Mercedes not only know what they're doing, but they're car lovers as well. To me, the AMG GT S is a masterpiece as it is, and it doesn't need more of anything.
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