Rent Mercedes GT63 S AMG in Europe

The Mercedes-AMG GT Four-Door Coupe poses a quite a threat to your cerebral cortex. It’s just a grand tourer with two extra doors, right? Nope, because it has a hatchback, and shares at least part of its architecture with the E-Class family. Externally, there are bits of CLS in there, but actually has nothing in common with it, and the two-door GT coupe’s naming convention (S, C, R and R Pro) has been booted out for a much more familiar two-number affair, in this case 63 and 63 S.

It’s a very impressive thing, and that’s without the usual 'it also weighs two tonnes’ clause. It’s not exactly like the two-door AMG GT - you don’t sit super-low looking out a letterbox windscreen at a bonnet stretching off into the distance. Our first taste of the four-door GT came in the US, where we tried the 63 S on track and road. On track, it displayed remarkable handling talent, managing to feel somehow different to the E 63 S, with which it shares 4Matic+ all-wheel drive and the supremely satisfying 4.0-litre, twin-turbo V8. We’ve been impressed by the responsiveness and breadth of power that this hot-V motor produces before but it’s just in a different league in the GT 4-Door. Some immediate differences: this car doesn’t share the GT’s dry sump, but it does get some bespoke ball bearings for the turbos to shorten spool-up time, and the power output is different too. Here you get 630bhp and 664lb ft of torque, or in other words, more than any other car the three-pointed star currently makes.

Unsurprisingly it’s seriously rapid – 0-62mph takes just 3.2 seconds and feels every bit as stimulating as that sounds – and sounds even more brutal and raw while doing it. A top speed of 196mph feels easily attainable given a very long, very empty road. The amount of torque that this thing produces is staggering and it’s so easily accessible, helped by the broadly infallible nine-speed automatic gearbox, which worked so well on track that the shift paddles felt a bit redundant. It’s got a wet clutch too rather than a torque converter, so you can get off the line with minimal delay, and has so much clever double de-clutching tech you won’t be pining for a dual-clutch auto ‘box in the slightest.

Source: https://www.carmagazine.co.uk