SYDNEY: Say hello to AMG’s new beast, the all-new Mercedes-AMG GT S, soon arriving in Australia. This is the company’s answer to high-end driver’s cars such as the Porsche 911 and Jaguar F-Type R.
The GT is the second ground-up car Mercedes-AMG has made, following in the footsteps of the SLS AMG ‘gullwing’. This is smaller and more agile for an even greater driving experience, with significant improvements in technology and efficiency.
The Mercedes-AMG GT S is spawned from the stunning but gimmicky SLS and uses some magnesium and aluminium componentry from that car, which used gullwing doors despite having no need of them, unlike that first 300SL that couldn’t use any other type of door so wide were its sills. The GT S is 92mm shorter than the much more expensive SLS, about the same width and some 27mm taller. It rides on a 50mm shorter wheelbase at 2630mm, and on tracks narrower by 2 mm at the front and 1 mm at the rear.
Eschewing the fancy doors, which, truth be known could be a real pain in the backside in tight multi-level carparks, the new GT S provides rather less of everything when compared with its predecessors. It has less weight, a lot of it tossed overboard with those doors, a smaller and yet just as powerful and musical engine, with a mighty new seven-speed automatic gearbox and it comes up with a two golfbag boot – try that with the SLS – and a chassis so beautifully honed that it can be a plush-riding pussycat one minute and a corner-consuming beast the next.
It’s not that previous 911-targeted Benz offerings have been unwieldy in any way. Far from it, in fact some have been joyously engaging drives. It’s just that this new baby is that much closer to that Porsche-shaped bullseye, an archetypal turn-key supercar.
While the deliciously simple (did someone say Porsche-like) shape is a solar gold double-take that you can’t take your eyes off, with no fripperies save for a naff but necessary rear spoiler on the top Edition 1 versions, the new power unit is the real star of the show. It’s an all-new twin-turbocharged direct-injected four-litre V8, up to 2.5-litres smaller than some previous AMG offerings.
The engine’s blowers are tucked neatly into the valley between the cylinders which makes the engine more compact, and enhances the whole car’s weight distribution and polar inertia – essential if a carmaker wants the best general, and on the limit handling characteristics.
New, smaller power unit is every bit as effective as the previous units, some of which had up to two and a half litres more capacity.
The new power unit which is designated M178 at AMG’s Affalterbach plant, makes 375kW at a heady and sonorous 6000 to 6500rpm, while the maximum torque value of 650Nm is available in a great broad wedge of effort all the way from 1750 and 4750rpm.
While its factory-posted 3.7-second zero to 100kmh is more or less what you’d expect from a 150kg car with that kind of power and torque available, the EU-rated 9.4L/100km and 219g/km CO2 is probably not, being better than you get from a most six-cylinder Aussie sedans. With slightly less turbocharger pressure, the same V8 power unit provides the standard GT with 335kW at 6000rpm and 600Nm of torque between 1600rpm and 5000rpm.
