90 CARMAGAZINE.CO.UK | APRIL 2019
The Giant Test
n 1978 The Who posed the question, ‘Who are you?’, and
it blasts from the GT 4 Door’s Burmester speakers as the
AMG and I begin the climb into the Peak District. It’s an ap-
propriate question for the Mercedes-AMG GT 4 Door, a car
that’s caused no little puzzlement since it was announced.
In name it’s an extension of the two-door, two-seat
AMG GT. In the metal it’s rather different. While the two-seat GT uses
aluminium chassis architecture derived from 2010’s SLS, the GT 4 Door
is altogether bigger, built using the newer, more versatile but heavier
platform shared by most of Merc’s rear-driven passenger cars, including
the E-Class and the CLS.
It’s the CLS that this car has most in common with. The CLS range
for the UK now tops out with the straight-six mild-hybrid AMG CLS 53,leaving a gap where the previous generation had the mighty V8-powered
CLS 63. Mercedes hates a microscopic gap in its range like nature abhors
a vacuum – so up steps the GT 4 Door. It beats the CLS for visual drama,
and has the muscle to live up to the looks: 577bhp from AMG’s rip-snort-
ing 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 in the GT 63, or 630bhp in the 63 S variant
tested here. That makes it the most powerful Mercedes currently on sale.
So it’s not a stretched AMG GT sports car, and nor is it a modified CLS,
although it looks a bit like one from a distance, and has similar underpin-
nings. A hair-splitter might also suggest it has five doors rather than four
if you count its top-hinged tailgate hatch. Whatever it is, it’s heading for
the same high-end, high-speed, passenger-friendly territory the Porsche
Panamera currently occupies (as will the upcoming Audi RS7 and BMW
M8 Gran Coupe). And, I’m discovering, it’s tremendously good fun.
As it devours the Derbyshire lanes through its shark-like grille with
a lip-smacking belch on every upshift, the Merc’s driving position cer-
tainly feels more like to a saloon car than a low-slung GT car. A relatively
high-set vantage point, it makes up in vision what it lacks in sportiness.
You sit behind Mercedes’ now familiar layout of two giant glossy digital
screens, above a swoopy dash peppered with turbine-style climate-
control vents, with integrated LEDs that chameleon their way from blue
to red as the temperature climbs. Further ambient lighting illuminates
the cabin like a coral reef by night, with 64 colours to choose from. It’s a
real statement interior, one right on the cusp of glamour and gaudiness.
The screens are controlled by touch-sensitive pads on the centre console
and the steering-wheel spokes. The interface becomes more intuitiveI
AMG GT 63S 4 DOOR
Pigeon-holers,
give up now
This is just a
photograph –
and still you
can hear the
AMG’s V8The Giant TestGiant test: AMG GT 4 Door