Jeremy Clarkson review: Mercedes-AMG GT 63

The new Mercedes-AMG GT 63 isn’t just huge, it’s ridiculously loud and fast, hitting 100km/h in just 3.2 seconds. It’s mad and completely out of tune with the times – and I love it.

Impressice: the Mercedes-AMG GT 63

When I put my foot down in my ­supercharged F-Type Jaguar I never think, “Oh no, something’s broken.” To the accompaniment of a muted but rather delicious rear-end cackle, it sets off at a pace you’d call exhilarating. It’s nice.

Some cars can’t do this, and they are boring. And some can do more than this, and they are silly. The first car I drove with what I call “silly” performance was the Ferrari 599 GTO. It was fine on Ferrari’s sunny test track in Italy – but in Scotland, where it was raining and there were sheep, I simply couldn’t put my foot down hard in any of the first four gears. It was just too terrifying.

Then there was the McLaren P1. I first drove that in the rain at the Spa race track in Belgium and nearly soiled myself. The ­Ferrari came with 492kW of power, and that was too much. The McLaren came with 673kW, and that was idiotic. Even with your right foot totally still, the pedal would sense your big toenail growing and instantly the rear end would slither about like an Australian breakdancer in a Fairy Liquid spill.

I’m often told by planet ­enthusiasts that purely electrical cars can offer this level of performance, but that’s nonsense. EVs are like teenage boys: lots of initial thrust then an early finish. Cars like the P1 don’t do that. The power is huge to start with and it stays huge until it becomes enormous, and then you faceplant a tree.

There’s another problem with cars this fast. People. Adenoid people. Action trouser people. Garden centre people. Ever since the invention of the internal combustion engine they’ve been in their villages, hands on hips and dressed as speed cameras, asking loudly why cars can ever go faster than 80kmh. Because that’s the speed limit, d’you hear?

Today, though, these people have developed a new technique. They get into their faceless boxes and drive around unbelievably slowly. I came back from Cirencester last night behind some kind of Mercedes people-carrier and it never once, on a beautiful country road, exceeded 55km/h. And the brake lights flashed on and off so regularly that I began to think I was at a ’70s rock gig.

Then, this morning, I latched on to the back of an MG going down the A40 at 30km/h. Dawdling has become a national pastime. There was a time when even the littlest old lady cruised down a road like this at 90km/h. Not any more. And this makes the idiotically fast cars even more silly, as it’s no longer the case that you aren’t allowed to drive them quickly. You actually can’t. And you can’t overtake ­because there’s always a cyclist coming the other way.

All of which brings me on to the new Mercedes-AMG GT 63. New? It doesn’t look it. It looks pretty much identical to the old GT 63. But it isn’t. Every panel is different, and now there are two seats in the back and four-wheel drive. Plus, it’s bigger. Much bigger. Parking will be an issue, I can assure you.

There’s more, too. The gearbox is no longer at the other end of the prop shaft, it’s attached to the ­engine. And the anti-roll bars have been replaced by electronics. So they won’t work after a while. If you want everything to not work, there’s even a hybrid version with fewer carbon dioxides.

The Mercedes-AMG GT 63’s dash.

The car I drove was the Premium Plus, which costs £165,000 ($322,000) in the UK. And, I must say, it feels like it should be more. It also feels like the engine is more powerful than it is. Because it’s silly fast. Scary fast. It’s also loud. Loud like AMG Mercs used to be when I was one of their most passionate customers. This car growls the growl of a bear called Thunderstorm. It’s a wondrous noise.

And yet, when you dig into the stats, you discover that the engine is not, as the badge would imply, a 6.3-litre V8. It’s a twin-turbo 4.0-litre. And it only produces 430kW. It feels like a lot more. Maybe it’s because the car is so huge. It’s as though someone has fitted afterburners to Yorkshire.

Mercedes says this car hits 100km/h in 3.2 seconds, but again, I’d bet it’s faster than that. The company also says it has limited the top speed to 315km/h, which brings me back to where I was: it’s not the electronics that keeps this car anchored in the real world – it’s the adenoidal clown in front, in his horrible Kia.

I wrote recently about how joyous it is to commute between my farm and my new pub. Mostly I take a road I used as a test run back in the days when I wrote for Performance Car magazine. But in the AMG it was a constant frustration because even the tractors were being held up. Still, it did give me plenty of time to think about other things, such as the meaning of life and whether I could make it to the pub before mine ended. And how lovely the dashboard was. I also noticed the seats were superb, that the rear-wheel steering wasn’t too vicious and that the ride, in Comfort mode at least, was rather good. Maybe because the front and back wheels are so far apart.

Of course, I could harp on about having to turn all the warning beeps off before setting sail, but that’s like complaining about how all the nation’s phone boxes have gone. The only real nuisance was the front windscreen, which in the sunshine reflects the top of the dash quite badly. Couple this to the head-up display, which flashes every time you stray over the speed limit, and seeing where I was going sometimes became tricky. Eventually I draped some black cloth over the dash, turned off the head-up display and used a piece of duct tape to cover the nanny-state warning messages on the dash. And then all was well.

Ordinarily, using drapes and tape to make a car bearable would cause me to question the wisdom of buying it. And I’d be similarly hesitant about buying all that power I could never use. ­Especially as it comes in a package that’s only really parkable in ­Nevada.

And yet …

This is the first fast Mercedes I’ve driven in a very long time that I’ve truly enjoyed. It’s mad and completely out of tune with the times, but I love the loudness and the unnecessariness of it all. ­Richard Hammond tells me he ­seriously thought about buying a GT but settled in the end for some kind of Porsche 911. You made a mistake, mate. The Merc’s an absolute belter.

Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S Premium Plus

ENGINE: 4.0-litre V8 twin-turbo petrol

PERFORMANCE: 0-100km/h 3.2 seconds, top speed 315km/h

PRICE: GT 63 series from $366,500

STARS: ★★★★