The Mercedes-AMG GT 63 is immensely powerful, but it’s also just immense, weighing in at more than 4,300 pounds. It’s properly quick, but that’s an insane amount of weight for a sports car to carry, about as much as the old BMW M5 weighed. Tonnage like that puts immense stress on suspension, brake, and cooling system components during a trackday, so Mercedes-AMG has decided to provide some reinforcement with the AMG GT 63 Pro. Let’s dig into it.
To start, the four-liter bi-turbo V8 under the hood now cranks out 26 more horsepower than in the regular AMG GT 63, for a new total of 603. However, that extra power isn’t noteworthy, as adding 26 horsepower to a machine like this is like adding a smidge of whipped cream to one of those sickly sweet over-frosted cupcakes you see in every supermarket. The bigger story is the sheer amount of extra cooling the AMG GT 63 Pro gets. We’re talking about not one, but two extra radiators in the nose, specifically to keep a handle on engine coolant temperatures.
That’s not the end of the cooling tweaks, either. In the regular model, the differentials and the transfer case are cooled using passive heat exchangers. Guess what the AMG GT 63 Pro gets? If you said an electric fluid pump for each of those three heat exchangers, you’d be correct. Talk about adding complexity.
Oh, and then there are the brakes. Because stopping a heavy car generates a ton of heat, and track session braking performance is often limited by the thermal capacity of the braking components, the AMG GT 63 Pro gets massive 16.5-inch carbon ceramic discs on the front axle. Add in revised brake cooling ducts and backing plates, and you should be able to go longer in this heavyweight coupe before experiencing brake fade. Add in no-cost Michelin Cup 2 tires, and the end result should be better braking performance.
Finally, we get to the aerodynamic tweaks. A new front apron, under-car air deflectors, active front spoiler element, and a fixed rear wing combine to reduce front axle lift by more than 66 pounds and increase rear axle downforce by somewhere in the neighborhood of 33 pounds. Sounds great, but why would something this quick have any aerodynamic front axle lift in the first place?
Right, time for a palate cleanser. This is the old AMG GT, specifically the AMG GT R. Like the new AMG GT 63 Pro, it was designed to go hard at the track. However, it weighs 3,686 pounds, hundreds less than the new car. It also features the simplicity of rear-wheel-drive, and a front-mid-engined layout. The result? A properly involving, naturally agile monster that wants to dance rather than pummel the pavement into submission. Hand-on-heart, it’s one of the best cars I’ve ever driven, a brilliant, heart-pounding mixture of malice and precision.
Don’t get me wrong, the AMG GT 63 Pro is properly quick. Mercedes-AMG quotes a zero-to-62 mph time of 3.2 seconds, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s a sandbagged figure. However, there’s more to a sports car than just putting figures on the board. For anyone looking for an astonishingly fast GT car that’s track-capable, the AMG GT 63 Pro looks like just the ticket. However, for sports car fans who adored the old AMG GT, this new variant has all odds stacked against it on paper.
(Photo credits: Mercedes-AMG)
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A “…mixture of malice and precision.” While I haven’t driven an AMG GT R, I instantly get what you are saying. Nice wordsmithing.
I feel like Mercedes really lost the plot with their recent offerings…
Exterior design is very meh, looks like they try to compensate the shapelessness of everything by just adding more and more garish lighting solutions (looking at E’s tail lights)
Interior wise, I can’t with the screens
And performance models (does AMG still mean anything anymore?) it seems like everything is an overcomplicated overweight complicated mess of systems that don’t work well together
Waiting now for the 2,000 horsepower (turbocharged, supercharged and nitrous injected 4 cylinder plus 57 electric motors), 7,000 kilogram, 6-wheel drive and 6-wheel steering Black Series or whatever
That may not be far off the mark for the next generation of G-Wagon. In which a subset of status-seeking upper-middle-class housewives will demand their husbands trade in the old one that still works just fine and go $200k into debt to purchase the new one so they can be queen soccer mom picking the kid up at the private school or it’s time for a D-I-V-O-R-C-E.
It’s going to be interesting when the money printing and constant access to credit can’t be sustained anymore. These automakers are going to find themselves in heaps of trouble, and judging by them lobbying to keep the inexpensive Chinese EVs out of the USA, they know it.
G Class buyers don’t finance.
They either lease (Just pay the German Luxury Depreciation!) or they pay cash.
Does MB make anything exciting anymore? The E63 wagon is about the only thing that I would want, the rest just seems so bloated and unoriginal.
Wait wait wait
Can’t something by definition not have pounds of mass? It has the force of the weight (pounds), and it has mass (kg), but not pounds of mass.
Unless you’re using mass a little more loosely to mean “yet another fatass car that’s losing a race to itself in an ugly, brute-force approach to maintaining a power-to-weight ratio,” in which case, by all means. Mass.
A pound is both a measure of force and a unit of mass. The force is defined as one pound of mass under one gravity.
This is where SI units help, because mass is in kg (the mass of one litre of water) and force is in Newtons (1kg m/s^2), so you can’t mix them up. It does mean a kg of mass weighs 9.80665N, which is a bit clunky, but that’s all down to the Earth being wonky, not science.
So obviously everybody in metric land (everywhere significant except the US) measures weight in, well, kg, because basic science isn’t popularly understood. And, to be fair, as long as we assume the value of gravity is a constant (which of course it isn’t, but again, no one cares) then we can pretend that scales are actually measuring mass, not a force.
In the UK the weight of people, and only people, is often measured in stones, one of which is 14 pounds. Base 14, and yet these people refuse to go metric. Urgh.
I’m currently correcting some drawings for a multinational engineering company and the drawing border has a box that says “weight (kg)”. They won’t let me correct it because it’s their standard.
Well, strictly speaking the customary unit of mass is the slug (mass of 32.2 lbm), not the pound. But everyone is accustomed to pounds, so the pound-mass is the more common term.
Also, base 10 is not all it’s cracked up to be. It makes elementary calculations easier (just move the zero), but in things like construction and machining where segmenting is the most common operation base 12 (ie inches) is actually more convenient. For reasons of fundamental physics, computing uses base 2, base 8, or base 16 but never base 10, and conversion errors cause no end of issues. And finally, the mathematicians are sneering at all of these composite-number based systems and begging the very few people who will listen to switch to a proper p-addic system, which actually makes a number of otherwise complex calculations far more simple.
Great answer! Thank you. I actually thought of you when I wrote that.
Stones though… Woof. I hate converting base 10 into standard units and back again (e.g. 3.25 ft is actually 3 feet 4 inches, but what I need is 3.1 feet which is where I pitch a fit because it’s, what, 3 feet 1.2 inches, etc etc) My straightedges are standard, and just getting metric ones wouldn’t solve for that.
I actually have come to appreciate non-SI units for some things; Fahrenheit is a decent descriptor of the range of temperatures we experience, stretched out across a (nominal) range of 100ish. If we’re not calculating Calories to heat water, why not? Likewise, a foot is actually a pretty handy size for things. There’s enough definition and range to imply differentiation without having to dig into decimals. I do wish it were base 10 though, rather than base 12 and then base 2. That’s madness.
“Simplify and add Lightness”
–Colin Chapman
“Add complexity, weight, and more larger grilles. And a wing. And extra letters on the end of the name. Did we get the big screens in there too?”
–Mercedes-
BenzAMGI wonder what a Caterham 420R would make of this monster?
I swear I read that graphic as ‘Heavy Hitler’.
As a German, I also briefly thought „they didn‘t pick THAT headline, did they?“ before re-reading it to make sure exactly which letters were present.
Okay but why would I choose this over a 911 or LC500?
or a locomotive, which I could also afford.
….paging Mercedes!
(As in our site’s Mercedes, not this one)
Because Racer X wouldn’t be seen in a mamby-pamby 911 or fancy-schmancy Lexus.
No amount of tweaks or technology will change that it weighs over 2 tons. Tweaks and technology and more horsepower will not get around Newton’s laws.
The first AMG GT was a brilliant, unique offering in the luxury sports car market with the long hood, mid engine and transaxle. An anti 911 for those who needed to not blend in at the country club.
This second generation commits the ultimate sin of any sports car, it’s heavy and generic. Why this over an M8, much less a 911 or Corvette?
I guess for those who just have to have a Mercedes?
BMW makes a handful of super sport motorcycles…but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in the wild or have met anyone who rides one, given all the other options of at least equal competence and lower price.
I’ve ridden a BMW S1000 RR, it belonged to a friend. As with all sports bikes over 750cc I found it to be horrifyingly fast, but otherwise perfectly nice.
He bought it because it was as fast as his track day R1 but cheaper than most of his Ducatis. He got rid of it because it was a bit boring apparently. He’s since whittled his bike collection down to just an MV F4.