11 things we learned about Merc's AMG GT S on a road-trip

A while ago a man from Mercedes asked if TG would like to join the AMG teams for a snoop about their pit garages before watching the Nürburgring 24 Hours. This decision took approximately three seconds to make.

The choices were a) take a local flight to Germany and then a taxi to the Nordschleife, or b) spending four times as long driving out from London to the 'Ring in something appropriate.

And so, a couple of weeks later, a Mercedes-AMG GT S apparently specced by Bruce Wayne slunk through the Top Gear office gates. We decided to use the GT S exactly as intended: a schporty charge across Western Europe. Here's what we found out...

Spoiler alert. ‘GT’ is possibly the most overused duo of letters in the car world, and it’s safe to say the AMG GT is not a born grand tourer. Not really. It can play at being one, if you knock the exhaust into librarian mode (you wuss), set the gearbox to auto and choose Comfort damping. But then, a Ford Focus can do long-distance cruising if you press it into duty. Doesn’t make it a true GT though, does it?

The GT is a firm, boomy car, with resilient, stiff damping even in its most lackadaisical mode, and an echo chamber of noises in the cargo bay behind your head, where the strut brace also likes to hum a resonant tune. Factor in super-fast steering and you start to realise this isn’t a GT car at all. It’s a sports car in a baroque hot rod suit. Closer in character to a 911 GT3 RS than a Turbo S. That was a shock.

It’s an optional Burmester job that sets you back £2,795, but the results really are stellar. And so they should be, especially with the cacophony of noise to drown out. But this is audio in a sports car like I’ve not really experienced before, able to broadcast podcast chit-chat crystal clear and yet capable of the proper thump-thump out-of-body Wembley Stadium experience when cycling through Spotify.

Really wide, the GT S. As wide as an SLS, in fact, but a bit shorter and lower. And given you’re perched above the transaxle, surveying a diminishing landscape of bonnet heading off into the next country – behind a windscreen that’s Huracan-narrow – the GT can be a bit of challenge to place.

You notice this when you’ve got to squeeze a brand-new one onto a railway carriage designed in the early 1990s, when cars were apparently scale model-sized. The optional £1,895 19/20-inch rims survived, thanks to the gods of sensible sidewall-equipped Michelins.  

The £5,995 ceramics are expertly judged. Some AMG carbon brakes are a guessing game, but these ones are quiet and progressive when mooching around, but more than happy to throw talons into the road surface and claw the GT S to a pulverising stop if you punch them.

Handy when you’ve got a car that leaps from 70mph to 100mph as if in a vacuum and Belgian lorry drivers don’t check their mirrors before drag-racing their chums.

Over three tank-fulls of fast motorway cruising, lots of heavy acceleration off slip-roads and plenty of urban traffic, the GT S scored an indicated 25.0mpg, 23.1mpg, and 25.1mpg. I kept an eye on the boost gauge to see if it cruises ‘off-boost’ in seventh gear, but there’s always a decent pressure on hand from the 4.0-litre V8’s internal turbos. It just appears to burn fuel rather efficiently. Real-world range is at least 300 miles. Handy.

And the real boon is you don’t feel the turbos stifling the car of character. AMG has gone out of its way to make the car react like a naturally aspirated machine, and it’s succeeded magnificently. Throttle response is among the best we've come across for a blown engine, plus it sounds thunderous and reasonably uncontrived inside and out. I didn’t miss the old 6.2-litre motor once.

Because who doesn’t want to feel like a pilot preparing for turbulence or engaging missile lock when selecting the desired severity of bottom-warming?

I don’t think this car makes a great first impression. The car’s initial handshake moments are intimidating. You drop into its claustrophobic cabin, note the pinched visibility, razor-sharp, light steering and stiff ride, the sheer damn width, and wince. After a day driving it in the UK, I have to admit I wasn’t massively keen.

Two things help the GT S: familiarity and space. After popping out the tunnel into France, onto the immaculately smooth and wide, uncongested autoroutes, the car’s girth and stiffness immediately became less of an issue. My brain had got used to the Adrien Brody nose swinging aggressively at the merest tweak to the steering. And with time and miles upon miles, I really warmed to the GT, and found it monumentally exciting, and exploitable.

If I’d just borrowed it one evening from the TG office, I doubt I’d have liked it much, but by the time I was back in the UK 800 miles later, the car had got right under my skin. Is it ultimately as pliable, as usable as a Porsche 911? No, but neither is an F-type or V8 Vantage, and the world would be as much poorer without those cars as it would AMG’s GT.

Over the N24 weekend, as you may have read, it rained a lot and hailed a bit. I thought the AMG would be a bit of a handful, but instead found shedloads of traction and masses of stability. What a big pussycat. The vortex of spray kicked up by the pop-up wing is cool too.

This GT S had optional bucket seats as part of the £1,795 Dynamic Plus package. Goodies like active engine mounts and the suede steering wheel are also thrown in.

Now, these seats. They’re hugely supportive and reasonably comfortable for three-hour stints, but the XXL-bolsters oddly blocked my elbows when trying to steer. If you go and lean your back against a wall, hold out an imaginary steering wheel in front of you then try and turn it, you’ll see what I mean. Strange, as AMG’s chairs are usually some of the best in the business. Stick with the standard seats, I reckon.

A major refresh of the old SLS’s tardy seven-speed gearbox has transformed shifting in the GT. Automatic mode is ideally calibrated, and the manual shifts whip through the transaxle like the gearbox with appetite. Mega exhaust theatre every time you squeeze the left-hand paddle, too.

Even in a spec that says ‘don’t talk to me, I’m on parole’, the GT S gets a stellar reaction. The N24 fans adored it, and I spotted other drivers dropping windows in anticipation of some V8 noise all through England and France as it surged along. A couple even walked halfway down the return Channel Tunnel train to seek out the ‘beautiful motor car’ they’d swooned over at passport control and have a look around. It just makes everyone's day.