Keep your eyes on the road for the new Mercedes electric AMG

As automotive sensibilities shift, Mercedes’ electrified AMG GT 63 S E Performance is more than keeping up with the times.

Mercedes GT 63S. Picture: Thomas Wielecki

Andrew Chesterton

3 min read

4:30AMMarch 01, 2024.

Updated 7:49AMMarch 01, 2024

Remember back when McDonald’s first started selling salads in Australia? That was a bit of a shock, right? Here was this most unhealthy of institutions, known the world over for dishing up delicious calories in the most imaginative ways — most of them fried — suddenly offering limp lettuce bowls alongside your Big Mac and nuggets.

My working theory is that McDonald’s never really wanted to make the leap into leafy greens. But in Australia there was a national focus on healthier eating, our obesity rates were trending, and I’m sure Macca’s wanted to be seen as part of the solution, rather than the problem. The fact that said salads arrived just before Morgan Spurlock’s Academy Award-nominated documentary Super Size Me hit cinemas was probably just a coincidence.

I tell you all of this because it is now 2024, and we find ourselves deep in salad season once again, and you can’t help but flash back to one of those soggy sadness bowls the moment you first clap eyes on the new Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S E Performance.

See, the mad-hatter engineers at AMG are the Ronald McDonald in this scenario. They’ve spent years, decades even, perfecting the petrol-burning V8 engine, even supersizing it with twin-turbochargers, only to suddenly find themselves staring down the barrel of a massive global shift in automotive sensibilities.

Raw grunt is suddenly out, electrification is in, and it is the kind of shift that could put the entire AMG business model at risk. But unlike Ronald, AMG will not go quietly into the night. You want electrification? Well try this on for size.

Because yes, this GT 63 S E Performance is electrified. A plug-in hybrid, no less. But it’s also the fastest and most powerful series-production AMG ever built. And it still has a whopping V8 engine. So it’s fair to say that efficiency probably wasn’t a core focus of the game plan here. Which is why this $399,000 Mercedes largely fails at all the things we’d expect from a car carrying this kind of plug-in technology. Its all-electric driving range? A paltry 12 kilometres. There is no high-speed DC charging either. Instead, you’re left using regular old AC mains power.

But will you care? Not a jot. Because what AMG has done instead is harness every electron to produce a drive experience so fast and furious it’s hard to believe.

Upfront, a twin-turbo V8 engine lurks, producing a massive 470kW and 900Nm. That power is fed through its own nine-speed automatic, complete with track-ready paddle shifters and a traction control-neutralising “Race” mode. All of which is familiar territory in the AMG world.

But where this GT 63 S E Performance gets interesting is at the other end of the car, where an electric motor — with its own two-speed transmission — is housed at the rear axle, and it’s capable of producing its own 70kW and 320Nm, or up to 150kW for 10-second blasts of flat-footed acceleration.

All of which means that, at the mercy of your right foot, there’s about 620kW and more than 1000Nm, or enough grunt to push this 2.4-tonne Mercedes to 100km/h in just 2.9 seconds, and on to a flying top speed of 316km/h. If this is a salad, it’s one drenched in ranch dressing and topped with bacon bits.

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that a vehicle that combines ridiculous power with a hefty kerb weight takes a little more feeling out than usual when you trundle onto a racetrack. It’s not so much point and shoot, as it is point, shoot, and then panic slightly as you very quickly try to calculate how much extra braking will be required to prevent you flying through the back fence.

But soon enough the big four-door coupe settles into a rhythm, and that brings confidence to further explore the outer limits of the most powerful AMG ever. Approaching 250km/h the big Merc feels comfortable, competent, and as though it has barely broken a sweat. Which, for the record, is the exact opposite of how the driver was feeling.

Most of that competence is down to the level of tech on board, such as the AMG air suspension, which smooths out road imperfections, the rear-axle steering which tightens up the corners, and the 6.1kWh battery, which Mercedes says is so clever that it essentially recharges itself, meaning the extra power on offer from the electric motor is in no danger of running dry.

It must be said, though, that electrification hasn’t entirely helped the AMG formula. The GT 63 S E Performance feels heavy and lacks the kind of purity on offer from lighter, petrol-powered performance cars.

But complaints from the corners quickly vanish on the straights, where that constant flow of power drowns out agility concerns. And the fact you can travel at supercar speeds with four doors and two back seat passengers (the Benz only has seating for four) is mind-bending.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to find a Big Mac.