As you’re drifting off to sleep, there are things you want to envision and things you definitely don’t want stuck in your head. A mental image of fluffy sheep nimbly hopping a fence is welcome, but something that looks like a creature from the depths? Absolute nightmare fuel. When the new Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupe debuted late last night, I thought it looked like a catfish raised entirely on a diet of bong water. Now that I’ve had a few hours to come to grips with the design, guess what? It’s somehow worse than it first appeared.
Right, before we dig into what makes this car so hideous, it’s time for some context. In 2014, Mercedes-Benz revealed a front-mid-engined coupe called the AMG GT and it was glorious. Seeking to cash in on that brand equity with the shamelessness of a comic book film, 2019 saw Mercedes-AMG rework the E-Class platform into a five-door liftback called the AMG GT 4-Door Coupe, which essentially became the de facto replacement for the CLS. With a choice of straight-six or V8 power, it had some muscle behind the posturing and looked handsome enough.
However, for the second-generation AMG GT 4-Door Coupe, Mercedes-AMG is going electric – just as the sort of people who buy six-figure luxury performance cars are expressing a thirst for the internal combustion engine. It’s definitely a bold move, one that probably would’ve been more successful five years ago, but it’s hard to deny that the specifications are impressive.
Specs like 1,153 horsepower. Yep, a one, then a comma, then another one, followed by a five and a three. A three-piece array of axial flux motors imbues the top-spec Mercedes-AMG GT 63 4-Door Coupe with output to rival the 1,234-horsepower Lucid Air Sapphire and the 1,019-horsepower Porsche Taycan Turbo GT. Granted, there is a caveat here: Full power is only unlocked during launch control at 80 percent state of charge. Still, when the stars align, Mercedes-AMG claims it can sprint from zero to 60 mph in two seconds flat, which is quicker than you can say the name of the vehicle, and it’ll allegedly run from a dead stop to 124 MPH in a mere 6.4 seconds. Oh, and the motors themselves are tiny, with the front motor measuring 3.5 inches wide and the rear motors each measuring 3.2 inches wide.
If that’s far too much, there is a lesser Mercedes-AMG GT 53 4-Door Coupe on offer with a mere 805 horsepower. You know, sensible grocery-getter stuff. Beyond shock-and-awe output, this EV features serious cooling capacity, rides on triple-adjustable air springs, steers all four wheels, offers multi-stage traction control, and can be optioned with interlinked hydraulic dampers for active roll stabilization. The battery pack boasts 106 kWh of usable capacity, and there’s silly 600 kW DC fast charging capability that will be a struggle to exploit in the real world due to most fast chargers tapping out at or below 350 kW. There’s even a drive mode with fake shifts and a simulated V8 soundtrack, a bit like what you get in the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N.
It’s certainly a monumental technological showcase for Mercedes-AMG, but there’s one big problem: This car redefines the word ‘gopping’ because in just about every way, it’s the most hideous thing to ever feature an AMG badge. Let’s start at the front, where a number of sins are committed.
For the past eight years or so, the so-called Panamericana grille with its vertical slats has been a Mercedes-AMG trademark. At face value, that’s fine, but the integration here leaves a lot to be desired. It seems extruded from the bumper, which introduces a whole lot of strange surfacing. If you look at other upper grille-less cars like the Porsche 911 or the Xiaomi SU7, you’ll notice that where the hood tapers down at the front, the upper edge of the bumper continues the same curvature before increasing its severity as it transitions to a vertical plane.
This AMG GT 4-Door Coupe does the opposite of that, like it’s got a permanent Kylie Jenner lip kit on. To sort of cheat this transition, Mercedes-AMG has gone with the most loathed visual element of the moment, a light bar spanning both headlights that looks like something you could buy off of AliExpress. Oh, and of course, the headlights have three-pointed stars in them, as if the dinner plate-sized emblem in the grille wasn’t enough. The end result isn’t simply a catfish mouth. If you cover either the headlights or the lower bumper, this thing looks like two different cars. That’s not attractive, full-stop.
In contrast to the front, perhaps the profile of the new AMG GT 4-Door Coupe being a bit generic isn’t a terrible thing. It has the same sort of modest dash-to-axle, upward lower flank crease, strong haunches, and sloping roofline we’ve seen from a litany of other electric sedans, although again, the devil is in the details. Each extreme of the greenhouse features a slab of plastic, and while the modestly sized triangle simulating a quarter window is relatively inoffensive, a small quarter-light would’ve been more tasteful than the triangle of plastic in the front door window aperture.
Right, brief break from visual whiplash over, onto the rear, which is about as minging as the nose. That taillight configuration is truly something else. Six round elements, one three-piece arc over the top, smoked horizontal elements presumably for indicators and reversing lights, all set into a giant sea of shiny black plastic. So much shiny plastic, the round elements with their garish inlaid three-pointed stars look lost in a void. It looks like the back of the car is wearing ski goggles, and that’s not even the bit that really annoys me.
The Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupe is going to be an expensive car. Pricing hasn’t been released yet, but the old combustion-powered model tops out north of $200,000. Given the inclusion of a panoramic moonroof, why couldn’t Mercedes-AMG paint the strip of trim between the moonroof and the rear window black for a cohesive look? It’s been done before on the W213 E-Class, Volkswagen offers a more extensive and expensive painted treatment on the current Golf R’s roof to match the tinted moonroof, so why couldn’t Mercedes-AMG finish this detail off properly on its five-door flagship?
In case you were expecting this thing’s gurning mouth and unresolved arse to give way to a gorgeous interior, you may want to temper your expectations, because everything is computer. Quite literally, there’s not one physical control on the entire face of the dashboard, with a three-screen array dominating everything like dropping an entire bottle of the sort of hot sauce you’d find at Ace Hardware into a bowl of oatmeal. You do get some drive mode selectors and a small bank of controls for stuff like hazard warning lamps and stereo volume in the console, but the sheer reliance on screens really cheapens the cabin of the AMG GT 4-Door Coupe. The metal speaker grilles, quilted leather door card inserts, and exposed carbon console are utterly lost in the digital assault.
Now granted, there have been cars with stars on the front unveiled to a dearth of applause. Stories from the debut of the R231 SL recount an awkward silence after the sheet was lifted, and the Dodge Intrepid-shaped EQS didn’t exactly set the world alight. However, being mocked on debut is a new one. I posted two photos of the new AMG GT 4-Door Coupe to my own Instagram story, and as you’d expect, it was viewed by many colleagues. Perhaps the most suitable reaction came from a very respected auto writer via private DMs, which have been anonymized to protect the guilty:
“Wait, this is real?”
Unfortunately.
“Holy shit.”
Indeed, the overarching reaction to this engineering marvel is one of incredulity that Mercedes-AMG would release something this visually unresolved, this garish, this bewilderingly fish-faced. From a marque that’s staked over a century of reputation on elegance, letting a car like this out of the studio is embarrassing. Mind you, this was always going to be a low-volume car, and Mercedes-AMG only needs a few dissenting opinions for the AMG GT 4-Door Coupe to be a modest success. As Autopian editor-in-chief David Tracy wrote in Slack, “I think it looks fantastic.”
Top graphic image: Mercedes-AMG
Baffling
It’s interesting, but no mention of range. There’s other cars in this realm, so it’s going to need to stand out. Or, you know, be yellow.
…and Audi is the one in trouble. We really are living in the upside down…
To be fair, they aren’t doing themselves any favors either…
Im sorry but how on earth did they drop the ball this hard. The GTXX concept was so close to gorgeous and this is what spawns from it?
Days since the last car that had my interest was on sale well into the 4 digits now
Good lord. So much for vertical affinity. RIP Bruno, you are sorely missed.
You spelled Friedrich wrong, I think. 🙂
Good lord the way the grill has vertical lights…am I actually seeing this?
This is monstrous, and I say this as an unapologetic fan of the AMG GT coupe with its big beautiful ugly snout. The three-point motif is hideous, overwrought, and I know to a certainty – because I have seen it in the cars they already have out in the world – it’s going to look like Temu bullshit. I despise those light up logos on the grilles, and twice over again because they have terrible, patchy LEDs that actually look like aftermarket trash, right from the factory.
With the exception of the side view from maybe the front axle to the rear axle, every part of this car, interior and exterior gets the same response:
WHy?
there is more grace and style and elegance in any modern Genesis than in this
I keep thinking the exact same thing.
at least Bruno Sacco did not live long enough to see what Mercedes has become…
THAT REAR END…. I CAN’T….LMAO… the shape is like Pontiac Trans AM or Firebird from late 90s…
I know why you German suckers lose to Chinese manufacturers today…
This comment preview popped up literally as I scrolled the picture into view and I started laughing out loud. You can’t make this shit up.
Christ on a graham cracker that is awful.
The worst part is their approach to losing to Chinese manufacturers is to try to out Chinese manufacturer them by making the most flagrantly hideous, tech overburdened monstrosities imaginable. It’s frankly embarrassing at this point.
yes, trying to beat Chinese in their Tech game is pathetic. They somehow forgot how hard people before them have been working to earn that reputation of Made in Germany…. Good times produce weak people….
This didn’t strike me as particularly ugly. I guess because maybe every car is pretty much ugly these days ??
I’m not sure what they are smoking in Deutschland, but it isn’t sausage. Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz–in particular–seem like they are in a competition for who can design the most hideous car, a game that has no prize and no winners. These shapes are designed to shock and arrest the attention of today’s buyers, not to endure to tomorrow.
To say nothing of the engineering, which is increasingly throwaway-grade.
I am saddened that the company that was producing elegant, attractive and balanced designs as recently as a decade ago would stoop to this.
Count me as one of the five people who actually likes this thing. Well, until seeing one in person in eight years and going “really, younger me?”
Those axial flux motors sure seem nifty. If they can ever get to the printed on a circuit board stage of mass production, they’ll be able to electrify a lot of things with all the room and weight capacity for batteries.
This looks like some kind of gaudy design exercise that somehow made it too far. But then, that describes a lot of the modern fancy cars we see now so who knows.
I want to hear more about their axial flux motor and related powertrain parts. That sounds like something actually useful that could be carried to other platforms.
I felt like that’s what the Cybertruck was. Something somebody at Tesla sketched upon a napkin, and then Elon Musk and senior leadership took it and ran with it because it would gain maximal attention…and then tried to figure out–only somewhat successfully–how to make it into a production car.
But since Tesla did win the prize for Most Hideous Modern Production Car Ever, I don’t see why other automakers are still trying to compete with designs like this. Give it up, Mercedes-Benz. The game is over.
That would not surprise me one bit. If the looks of a CT weren’t so insane I’d bet it would have been more successful. I had a Beast as a loaner for a few days and even with me being mostly anti-SUV it was surprisingly fun to drive. It’s so far out there I don’t think I could ever own one even if I had a use for it, though.
It’s the Neue Homer!
I want to know if there’s a capacitor that works in conjunction with those axial flux motors.
Like, guys, could this be a car with a legit flux capacitor on board?! It would be like living in the future or, better yet, 1985!
It’s hard to believe that the company who had the staid but incredibly tasteful W126 and R129 on the roster at some point is releasing this hot mess.
Technically, it’s amazing. But it’s not something I want to be seen in or actually spend any time in. Take the drivetrain from this and somehow (with huge piles of cash) and put it in a W126, I’d be happy.
Mercedes’ goal is to harness the energy from Bruno Sacco’s corpse spinning in his grave to run a generator. The problem is, after this, it will be hard for them to design anything more ridiculous to keep him spinning next year.
I think it looks pretty cool.. The rear could be reworked a little better, but it’s still a thousand times better than any Hyundai or Infiniti.
Profile doesn’t look too bad, like maybe they’re going after folks who can no longer get a Tesla Model S. But Holy Mother of Ursula the Sea Witch, what were they thinking with that snout and tail?
I actually don’t hate the front end and side profile. It’s a bit gaudy, and in typical German fashion it’s clearly designed with the Chinese market in mind, but I genuinely don’t mind it. We keep begging for cars that aren’t just anonymous gray blobs and this is certainly not an anonymous gray blob. Hell I think the front end is better and more cohesive than any of the war crimes coming out of Bavaria that are similar shameless appeals to the Chinese market.
….but that rear end. Unbelievably tacky. The Mercedes emblem taillights look like something a GLA250 owner who’s stretching their budget to lease it would buy off Amazon and stick on. The interior is a typical joyless German tech dystopia as well. Totally unacceptable in this price range.
They’ll sell a total of like 3 to the Chinese buyers they’re so pathetically desperate to attract and these will be canceled within a few model years. Maybe they’ll be intriguing buys for the performance alone when they’re selling for $40,000 in 3 years….
I have to disagree on the front end. It’s hideous and could have been done boldly without looking like a caricature of itself.
The side is fine, but probably a little too generic and needs more spice, but tastefully, please.
And yeah, that rear end is damn near a visual crime trying too hard.
Not that I’m a fan of the way China does business, but I think the whole “being able to blame the Chinese for today’s ostentatious designs” thing is a bit of a false rhetoric. It’s this entire global culture we’re in of trying to snatch fleeting bits of consumers’ intention, of valuing magnitude of attention over quality, that has produced cars like this.
Nominally, ostentatious, tacky and unenduring eras of car design were around well before China began participating on a global stage. Just look at most 50s American cars.
And most modern Chinese cars are fairly subdued to the point of being boring. I don’t think “the Chinese buyer” wants ugly.
With that shade of glowing neon green/yellow they’d have done better using nuclear trefoils as the three pointed star.
I want a car with biohazard tails.
Save that one for an ICE exhaust pipe.
I hereby dub this the Groypermobile. Someone smack the thing with a carp carcass.
A carpcass?
Hah!
Is a Groyper a yet-to-be-discovered deep sea creature with 2 separate mouths? The mouth on top closes when the bottom one opens, and vice versa, to catch prey at double the normal rate? Does it also have 6 phosphorescent red anuses to efficiently poop out all of the bones of the creatures it catches?
Nope, it’s some far right edge case online political collective indirectly descended from 70’s marxists in France.
There is an attractive car hiding in this thing based on the profile; hopefully we’ll all get to see it when they do a mid-cycle refresh on this abomination.
I like the lighting gear on this and other parts of this…but as a whole, I severely dislike it. Just give me those parts in a different design please!
Tasteless, ugly, gaudy, and EV. This thing is tailor-made for the Chinese nouveaux-rich market.
I agree that it is hideous, but I kinda like it. Doesn’t really matter since I’ll never be able to afford one.