Drive Review: GT 63 S 4dr is a family-friendly missile

Under the skin of the new Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S 4-door there’s a lot going on as the transition from AMG GT sports car to GT family car proves to be anything but straightforward repurposing. But if you’ve gone off the whole oxymoronic genre of fast SUVs, this menacing mutation is far more versatile than its niche status would suggest.

If Merc’s GT is the self-proclaimed answer to Porsche’s 911, then the GT 4-door deals with the Panamera head on. In the past that would have been the job of the CLS 63 AMG but perhaps Mercedes thought there wasn’t enough sports car DNA in that package. The GT 63 S 4-door on the other hand spent more of its upbringing around the track – it even has all the pre-loaded track telemetry you’d need to share with absolutely nobody.

As for styling, this segment is a bit of an open goal; the upcoming BMW M8 Gran Coupe is probably the best of a mediocre bunch. Styling of these sporty GTs is an eternal compromise and the GT 63 struggles to juggle brutality with beauty. Still, it possesses more on-road presence versus a Panamera, the same status quo as an AMG GT over a 911. Rear space with individual rear seating is spacious albeit not bristling with S-Class type lux and the boot extends far into the wheelbase. So long as you don’t pack too high, you’ll be fine.

Underneath the packaging the GT 63 S 4-door is an amalgamation of C-Class, CLS and E-Class architecture that has in the simplest terms been stiffened and strengthened to cope with track days. As a result, ride quality is perhaps its biggest weakness, reacting to surface changes with all the clumsiness of a last-generation A-Class. Loose items jiggle about. This annoys me in a sportscar, let alone a Gran Tourer where the expectation of refinement is several notches higher. By comparison the E 63 S rides much better while being 9/10nths as raucous. You’d need something akin to the smoothness of a billiards table to even contemplate putting the adaptive dampers in Sport. In fact there are so many systems and menus in the GT 63 but over half of them are too extreme for the normal type of driving you’re likely to be doing. The setting I used most often was for the interior light effects while the other nine thousand chassis systems felt like overkill and can detract from the car’s prodigious grip or silky shifts – Drift Mode being top of that list.

Yet you can’t argue with the quality of the two screens up front with their glossy animations and graphics. Hooray for physical buttons either side of the gearshift, each with their own image. That couldn’t have been a cheap exercise but it adds so much speed and directness to the more fiddly touchpads on the steering wheel.

It’s a pity that the GT’s ride is so knife-edged – pronounced by hard seats – because at speed it completely transforms into a potent weapon that feels half its size. You can sense the rear-bias and rear-wheel steering take a virtual chunk out of the car’s 5-metre length. The body remains ridiculously flat and driving position is superb. Ours came with beefy R118,000 carbon ceramic brakes that surprisingly felt perfectly tuned for the road. It’s in these incredibly brief, albeit ecstatic, moments that make you accept its position alongside cars like the E 63 AMG.

The powerplant is a continuation of the 4.0-litre V8 twin turbo and 9-speed gearbox. It sits on dynamic engine mounts so as not to affect the car’s balance. With 470kW and 950Nm, this is Merc’s most powerful iteration of the renowned Hot-Vee (the E63 S has 450kW, 850Nm and a Panamera Turbo 404kW, 770Nm) and those benchmark figures are validated by a class-beating 0-100kph of 3.2 seconds. The soundtrack is still awesome, enriched by vocal turbochargers venting pressure back into the atmosphere. For us it just has the right amount of raw, old school colossal punch married with ultra modern, lag-free tech.

With a base price of R2,900 000, the AMG GT 63 S 4-door is R900,000 more than an E 63 S which notwithstanding the E’s bigger boot also has a chassis comfort that we feel is better suited to most driving and can be dialled up enough if the road gets twisty. When you’re talking about family cars that do 0-100kph in mid 3s, I’m not sure there are too many people out there who care about another tenth or two. The styling still looks compromised, like it would be better off as a shooting brake and those racetrack credentials don’t make it a better car to live with. But if you want a super fast 4-door GT, as the name implies, with lots of eye-popping tech, this is probably the pick of the genre. Andrew Leopold

Specification: Mercedes GT 63 S 4-door