This Mercedes-Backed Supercar From 50 Years Ago Would Make A Better AMG-GT Than The New One

Decades ago, Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart was famous for not exactly specifying what “obscene material” was, but stating explicitly that he “knows it when he sees it.” With some of the latest high-end car concepts released recently from brands like Ferrari and Mercedes, we’re witnessing a lot of that. People have strong expectations about what cars with these nameplates should look like, and these new vehicles do not match those expectations.

Most recently, it was the Luce, Ferrari’s Jony Ive-designed electric crossover, that many thought looked more like a future Nissan Leaf than a product of Enzo’s firm. The kindest thing the commenters said was, “at least it isn’t flat out ugly like that new Mercedes AMG GT thing.”

Ah, the latest AMG GT; one of the last products from the design leadership of Mercedes design chief Gordon Wagener. This new EV four-door has been almost universally panned by the press (including The Autopian) for not only being unattractive but, more importantly, for not looking even remotely the way such a sporting Mercedes-Benz should appear.

The question is, what should a high-performance Mercedes-Benz EV really look like? MB’s historic “first supercar” past can certainly inform a 2026 take, but the use of the gullwing 300SL as a sort of muse has to end. No, we should go back to the era that defined the Mercedes-Benz products for people who are still alive. There’s a concept from the 1970s that would be perfect to bring back to life and recapture what made a Mercedes a Mercedes.

Does It Sing “Take Me To The River” When You Touch It?

From its angry, squinty-eyed face with an enormous mouth to the blacked-out tail that looks like it was lifted from a 1994 Trans Am (but not nearly as well done as on the Pontiac), many found little to like about the latest AMG GT . One commenter wondered aloud what it would look like if you took off the offending front and rear or even messed with details like blacking out the body-colored strip at the top of the rear window; they claimed that maybe a nice-looking car exists underneath there.

I’ll save you the Photoshopping or Microsoft Paint work; if you try to make those exact alterations to this new AMG GT, you’ll basically end up with a Taycan or an E-Tron GT. Yeah, it improves the looks, but then it’s a Porsche lookalike, not a Mercedes. As Adrian mentioned, the whole “Sensual Purity” thing that Benz has apparently used of late as a theme is rather at odds with what made Mercedes the lauded brand it was. To me, the pinnacle of this was their products of the seventies and eighties.

The cars from those “Golden Years” of Mercedes were designed under the watch of people like Paul Bracq and Bruno Sacco who were trained as draftsmen or engineers first, not car designers in the typical sense. Function is what played a major role in the looks, something that is apparent when you observe one of the masterpieces of the era like the 1979-91 W126 S-Class.

A tapering aerodynamic form shaped by the wind, with grey lower flanks to protect the car from stone chips. No park bench bumpers: Mercedes even made it so that the American-market car bumpers looked as good as the European cars, and the bumpers wrap all the way around to the wheel openings. Brightwork used sparingly to protect and on things like the trunk pull-down. Door handles designed for low wind resistance as well as maximum pulling power after an accident.

Ribbed taillights and signals allow visibility even when they were filthy. Other than that signature grille, absolutely zero style-for-style’s sake. Not a beautiful car in a traditional sense; just rather vast, humorless cars to be driven by vastly humorless people. The beauty was in the fact that every part of the design had a reason to be there, which created a timeless look. Don’t like it? Mercedes didn’t care. Did it make the car too expensive? Get out of the showroom; there’s a BMW or Chevy store down the street. That kind of attitude, obnoxious as it seemed, was able to be backed up by superior product. It worked on many; as a twentysomething, I was treated rather like something that you’d scrape off the bottom of your shoe after visiting and essentially getting kicked out of a Benz showroom. A better person would say that material objects don’t define you, but I felt the immediate need to empty my savings account to get a seven-year-old 100,000-mile example , which you see below. I’d do it again.

However, 13 years later and with 250,000 miles on the clock, I was never tempted to replace it with any of the post-year 2000 products from Daimler-Benz. The quality wasn’t there, and the aesthetics were hurting as well. For some reason, when Mercedes tries to do “emotional” design it always seems to border on the laughable. From the first time I saw a 2003 CLS “coupe,” I knew this was gonna get silly; things like those egg-shaped C-class sedans that looked like insects proved that I was right.

It’s all culminated in this stupid fish-faced AMG thing. I know what you’re saying, though. “That’s fine, Bishop, but what we want a Mercedes AMG GT to be a low, exotic-like machine and not some big old sedan. There’s no way to put those values of a 1980 240D into such a low-slung sports vehicle.” Actually, there were several examples of Benz that did just that in the seventies, and I’d like to use these as an inspiration for a quasi-retro redux of the unfortunate new AMG GT.

311, But Not The Band

While BMW actually did get into the mid-engine exotic supercar market with the M1 in the late seventies, Mercedes-Benz chose not to follow them. That’s not to say that they didn’t at least dabble with the idea, though Mercedes being Mercedes, they were not publicly done as flights of fancy but instead as “experimental” pieces to test things like aerodynamics and powertrains (in this case, rotary engines). The striking C111 was first shown in 1969, and even though the aesthetics of these Brun0 Sacco-lead cars were not the driving factor, they were certainly attractive, futuristic, and highly influential cars.

There was a whole series of these things with more extreme takes on the aerodynamic theme.

Oddly enough, soon-to-depart Mercedes studio head Gordon Wagener (as already mentioned, the man responsible for the current and unloved AMG GT) oversaw a tribute to the C111 a little while back. You can already guess what direction it took. With melted curves, gaudy detailing, and a Fendi bag-knockoff-style interior, it looked like one of those chintzy, lambasted recent DeTomaso proposals more than something with a badge that once adorned a Paul Bracq “Pagoda” SL.

It’s obviously a “tribute,” but it’s lost all of the functional purity of the original, as the comparison below shows.

Check out the interior. It looks like J.Lo ‘s closet exploded. Were they kidding? That’s a Mercedes?

A far better tribute to the C111 than the Wagener one was done less than a decade after that car debuted, and it wasn’t actually the work of Mercedes themselves.

CW Did Not Stand For Country Western

Eberhard Schulz was a former member of the Porsche development team that joined forces with the Buchmann brothers of the fabled bb-Auto (which currently collaborates with our own founder, Beau Boeckmann). Together the Buchmanns and Schulz created what they called the CW311, a tube-framed “continuation” of the Mercedes C111. The dude below seems to like it, and I think he drove in NASCAR or something.

Some features like the periscope rear view mirror and drop-down headlight covers and dropping central “hood” to release radiator heat are a bit much, but they are nonetheless functional elements that something that most blind-to-the-rear Italian exotics didn’t address.

This, my friends, is what a Mercedes hypercar should look like. Purely functional, understated yet purposeful, and something that a balding fiftysomething could drive up to a country club and not come off as some stroke trying to act like a young gigolo player. It’s clean and simple, but a Ferrari pulling up alongside will know not to take challenging it lightly. It’s almost like a Mercedes interpretation of a Porsche 928.

The back, I’ll admit, is a bit heavy and could be better resolved, but those R107/W116 taillights look spot-on.

The massive AMG-built V8 sat midship, and there was still room for a small trunk behind the motor and hot exhaust.

The final result impressed Benz so much that they actually allowed Buchmann to display three-pointed stars on their CW311; reportedly the only time in history that this was allowed to happen with a product not built in-house. Naturally, such a car had no place in the Mercedes lineup at the time, so production was not considered, though Schulz went ahead and made several dozen examples branded as the “Isdera Imperator” with Benz motors but no Mercedes logo in the grille (but not that you, as an owner, couldn’t add one, wink-wink).

Maybe it was too ahead of its time; certainly, it was for Mercedes. However, with some modern detailing it might fit right in with today’s crop of exotics. Let’s face it: based on the reception the current AMG GT is getting, it’s a pretty low bar to make something people might like more.

C You Fifty Years Later

Making a CW311 tribute as an AMG GT somehow makes perfect sense. Forget “sensual purity;” this is pure functionality, designed by people who want everything in its place that belongs in its place and a shape with detailing that serves a purpose. If done right, such values usually result in an attractive car, but even if it didn’t, the designers probably couldn’t care less.

As an EV, this AMG GT could put passengers in back where the massive engine sat in the CW311. I’ve kept a remarkable amount of the original car’s design as-is but modernized it a bit:

In the back, the LED Mercedes logo taillights of the recently presented car are gone, replaced by stripes that simulate the ribbed lights on all of the classic 1980s Benz products. To me, this visual touchstone somehow says “Mercedes” even more than Mercedes logos. Note the cut line for the pop-up rear spoiler that can retract at low speeds.

Up front there will be room for the small frunk of the fish-faced AMG GT for you to keep your rich person stuff away from the prying eyes of passers-by:

Inside, the original CW311 had a dashboard that enveloped the driver with controls and gauges:

Our new interior would do the same thing, wrapping around the driver.  Oh sure, there are screens just like on Wagener’s latest AMG, but I’ve tried to conceal them as much as possible; the screens fit the design and not the other way around. Plenty of actual buttons as well, with the function able to change based on notations in the screen above. Note also the big levers for “gear” changing and-gasp- opening the door. You want pushbutton latches? Mercedes wouldn’t care; buy another car.

In this view of the rear compartment you can see how the central tunnel continues all the way to the back; this would be to hold more batteries in a safe manner for ideal weight distribution, it also would allow for more cargo space in other parts of the car. Note the split line for the seatbacks that would make a surface flush with the top of the console when folded?

That’s to allow for a flat floor when folded down that could let you carry large, long objects in back like furniture and toilet paper to your kid’s house. It’s not like you as an owner of an AMG GT would ever have such junk in your own home, right?

Using a car with over 1000 horsepower for Costco runs would be right in line with the Mercedes ethic of pure functionality first and foremost. If you really want “The Best Or Nothing,” that’s what it will take.

Think Of It As A G-Wagon Of Four Door Coupes

Ironically, some might say that the only model in the current Mercedes lineup that keeps the design values of the Golden Era cars is one that’s a modernized version of a product that debuted in 1979: the G-Wagen.

The CW311 debuted in 1978. Parked next to the latest version of that classic G-Wagen SUV in your garage, this AMG GT “tribute” I’ve illustrated would seem a far better pairing than the one Mercedes just premiered.

You want to know the scariest part of this whole exercise? To do these Photoshop illustrations, you know what I used as an underlay for them? Something with some crisp surfacing and understated detailing that would translate to the feel of a CW311 tribute: a Lamborghini. Seriously, when current Lamborghinis are more subdued, tasteful, and rational designs than the offerings of Mercedes Benz, something is wrong with the world.

Top graphic base image: Lamborghini