Mercedes-AMG GT 63 SE Performance review: Weaponised environmentalism to create the band’s most powerful car

Sure, you can plug the $400,000 hybrid into the mains, but the electric motor is there only to add another 150kW to the twin-turbo V8 petrol engine.

Mercedes-AMG GT 63. Source: Supplied

Last year I went on holiday to the south of France with a Porsche Panamera and it was a disaster. Every night I’d drive it into Antibes or Juan-les-Pins and immediately get into an argument with my passengers, who kept spotting parking spaces that were either 10cm long or vacant ­because they were in front of someone’s garage door.

The fact is this: on the Cap d’Antibes it is not difficult to park a car – it is impossible. So this year I figured I’d go everywhere on foot. And that didn’t work either ­because, as you may have heard, temperatures in the south of France during August reached the boiling point of rock.

I tried on the first night to walk to a charming little Italian place I know near the market in Antibes, but when I got there it looked as if I’d fallen in the sea and all I wanted was a saline drip. The next morning, however, while ferreting about in the garage of my rented house I found a bicycle that was plugged into the wall. I have read about these things, so I decided it might be the solution. Easy to get into town thanks to the electrical assistance and easy to park when you get there.

And so that evening off I went, and to begin with, on the uphill stretch, all was well. I’d turn the pedals and immediately I could feel the battery reducing the effort to almost nothing at all. I was on a bicycle and I was moving up a hill and my thighs didn’t hurt even a tiny bit. It was amazing.

Then I reached the top of the hill and tried to freewheel down the other side. Hmm. It seems you can’t do that with my type of ­electrical bicycle because its ­brain thinks that if it’s going downhill, it may as well use all that forward motion to charge its battery. So you come to an immediate and alarming halt.

The only way to stop this happening is to carry on pedalling. Constantly. So I did, and then, when my roadrunner legs were producing enough friction in my hip sockets to melt flesh, I changed up a gear to lessen the agony. Good? No. Because pretty soon I was in fifth, accelerating past 700km/h. And that’s when I noticed I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt.

I don’t subscribe to the idea that you need protective clothing when riding a bicycle. But when you are nearing the sound barrier it does cross your mind that a full set of leathers and a Kevlar hat might not go amiss, especially as there’s a weird rule of the road in this neck of the woods. Most of France has given up on the idiotic idea that people on a main road should give way to traffic emerging from the right. But on the Cap d’Antibes it still applies. So there I was, going faster than ­Richard Noble, on a ­bicycle, while wearing swimming shorts and a T-shirt, knowing that at any moment some walnut-faced peasant could lumber out of a side turning in his beaten-up Clio.

I covered the 3km ride to the restaurant in four seconds and once my hair stopped hurting and my eyes had moisturised themselves back into usefulness I had a lovely ragu and some beers and then set off home. Which should have been fine because it was all uphill. You have control of an electrical bicycle in these circumstances. But it was not fine at all because even though the bike has its own power station, it didn’t have any lights. I therefore had to ignite the torch on my phone, shove it in my back pocket as a makeshift rear light and start ­rubbing the rosaries.

All was well, though, for one very good reason. Everyone else in that part of the world has also given up on their cars. You occasionally see one of those Renault Twizzy things and a few people have a Citroën suitcase car, but, for the most part, people use contraptions to move about instead.

Once, while travelling into Juan-les-Pins at a steady 300km/h, I was overtaken by a man on what appeared to be an electrical unicycle. And then, very often, I had to weave through a flock of people on electric scooters who were dawdling along at a pedestrian 150km/h. But as the days drifted by in a comfort blanket of silence and speed, and no one ever pulled out of a side turning and no one came up behind my dimly lit back pocket, I started to think it was all rather idyllic.

The electric motor, really, is there only to add another 150kW to the 470kW that come from a twin-turbo V8 petrol engine.

All of which brings me on to the Mercedes-AMG GT 63 SE Performance pictured here, which is about as far removed from the electrical bicycle as the gurgle of a newborn baby is from a Texas monster truck festival.

Yes, the $400,000 four-door coupé is a hybrid – but this is ­weaponised environmentalism, used to create the most powerful car Mercedes-AMG has made. Sure, you can plug it into the mains if you really want to, but on silent drive alone you’ll only cover maybe 8km.

The electric motor, really, is there only to add another 150kW to the 470kW that come from a twin-turbo V8 petrol engine. Then the volcanic torque is fed instantly to the rear wheels, using a system developed for Lewis Hamilton, so that one second you’re sitting there and the next it feels like you’ve been booted in the back by Jonny Wilkinson. Three seconds later, with the front wheels now helping distribute the power, you’re doing 100km/h, and five seconds after that, if you’re going downhill, you’ll be overtaken by someone on an electric bike.

Inside it’s all rather excellent, with back-lit jet engine heater vents and an aeronautical all-glass dash. And I was keen to get going as soon as possible. But there was a problem. None of the buttons or switches are illuminated until the ignition is on. So where’s the starter button?

Having found it behind the steering wheel, everything came to life and nothing made much sense, so I drove it about using nothing but the steering wheel and pedals. Stuff I understand.

I have to say it was all a bit ­underwhelming. Fast, yes. Very. But you sense all the time that a lot of the power is being wasted carrying about the weight that’s used to create it. It is certainly not nimble in the bends. And what’s happened to that signature AMG bellow?

I fear the Mercedes is typical of a modern-day problem. It’s too complex, too big and too heavy. It feels like what it will soon become: a dinosaur. But don’t worry. It’s not like I’ve been on the road to Damascus. I haven’t suddenly changed my mind and decided that an electric bike is the future. It isn’t. In fact, as I write, my bike’s battery is reaching a point where it catches alight and sets fire to all of the Côte d’Azur.

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Mercedes-AMG GT 63 SE Performance

ENGINE: 4.0-litre, V8, twin-turbo petrol plus electric motor
PERFORMANCE: 0-100km/h 2.9 seconds, top speed 316 km/h
PRICE: From $400,000
RATING: Three stars out of five