This is the new Mercedes-AMG GT Black Collection, a vehicle with a singular purpose: to push the boundaries of what a vehicle carrying a range-plate can do. For instance, manually increase the entrance splitter and you’re barred from the community road… keep track of-only for you, sunshine. That is how fantastic the line is.
Just a brief refresher then on AMG’s most hallowed badge, now on its sixth outing: “A Black Series is normally a two-seater, constantly a hardtop,” Joerg Letzel, merchandise manager at AMG points out. “The GT R Professional was based mostly on the GT R, but you’ll notice there’s no ‘R’ in GT Black Sequence, it is a totally different design, it represents what’s technically achievable, the pinnacle of a motor vehicle made for the racetrack, that can also be pushed on public roads.”
In the motor bay we locate AMG’s dry-sumped 4.-litre twin-turbo V8… just not as we know it. Fitted with a lighter, flat airplane crank – tech ordinarily linked with highly strung, superior-revving Italian supercars and, er, Mustang GT 350Rs – it’s a confident-fireplace way to substantially change the GT’s burly character, add some whipcrack to the tachometer and make it audio like Zeus splitting the sky in two immediately after a notably punchy Jalfrezi. It is also assisted to liberate 720bhp at 6,700rpm (the redline stays at 7,000rpm) and 590lb ft of torque amongst 2,000rpm and 6,000rpm. That’s 143bhp and 74lb ft much more than the GT R Professional. That is a lot.
Some numbers for you: top speed is 202mph (4mph far more than the GT R Professional, regardless of dragging a trestle desk alongside driving it, the first Black Series to see the significantly aspect of 200mph), 0–62mph in 3.2 seconds (.4 more rapidly than the Professional), -124mph in below 9s and a Nürburgring lap time however to come. Any one betting towards it whooping the Aventador SVJ’s 6 minutes 45secs? Not us.
But hang on a moment, the AMG GT R Pro is by now a bewinged, slashed, track-focused AMG GT so qualified and complete that it secured a podium end in our 2019 effectiveness automobile of the calendar year jamboree. Isn’t this just a include of the very same tune? Indeed. And no. They serve equivalent functions, attractiveness to a comparable audience, sure, but the Black Series is major metal to the Pro’s prog rock. Surplus all regions, a Pro + 20 for every cent, as far as AMG can lawfully, and with a clear conscience, go. And at this rarefied end of the supercar industry, that’s currency.
AMG mentions the look-a-likey 911 GT2 RS, McLaren 720S and Ferrari F8 Tributo as its closest rivals – all mid- or rear-engined cars, I helpfully issue out. “Yes, but the philosophy of Mercedes-AMG is front mid-engine, with a transaxle gearbox in the situation of the GT. They operate mid-motor and a transaxle, it is not so different.” Aside from the AMG’s several hectares of ridged and punctured bonnet, Letzel has a point.
Surplus all regions, a Pro + 20 for every cent, as considerably as AMG can legally, and with a distinct conscience, go
At each individual corner, like the Pro, competitors-spec coilover suspension, but with electronic AMG trip handle campers fairly than the clicky, manually adjustable ones on the Pro. Front wheel camber and front and rear anti-roll bars are tweakable by hand, while, so you will at least be able to look busy at your community track day.
To be sincere, we were being hoping for Liberty Stroll-sized built-in arch extensions (see exhibit A, the SL65 Black Series) that give these final Mercs their monstrous, cartoonish top quality. On shut inspection there are wider arches below, but apologetic lip trims to accommodate the broader Pilot Activity Cup 2 Rs, not carbon-fibre porches at each and every corner. At least the rest of the bodywork isn’t holding back.
At the front: a more substantial grille equivalent to the GT3 race car, a manually-adjustable entrance diffuser with two positions – avenue and race – and, typically, a lot more holes than a Richard Curtis screenplay. There are louvres in the best of the wheel arches to ease tension and boost downforce, sideskirts like sideboards and a completely flat underfloor to sucker you onto the tarmac. No formal downforce figures forthcoming from AMG, only “significantly a lot more than a GT R Pro”. We really do not doubt it.
Nearly anything I have missed? Oh indeed, the scaffolding rig of a rear wing. A double-decker, where by the angle of both “blades” can be tweaked manually, but also an electronically-managed flap on the major component that can go close to automatically or be controlled manually through a button on the centre console. Amusingly, AMG’s spec sheet notes that the “large double-stream retailers in the bonnet not only discharge heat air, but also direct it past the A-pillars – this way the rear wing can be optimally flowed and can also be manufactured scaled-down.” SMALLER.
Lightweighting has also happened: there is thinner glass for the windscreen and rear window, carbon-fibre shell bucket seats as normal, carbon bonnet, carbon wings, carbon tailgate and a stepped carbon roof. Carbon-ceramic brakes, way too, and for the entire Bernd Schneider an optional observe package adds a titanium roll bar, 4-level harnesses and a fireplace extinguisher. Result of this loss of life by carbon fibre? A kerbweight of 1,540kg – 35kg fewer than the GT R Pro.
AMG is not putting a limit on production quantities for the Black Sequence, just a confined interval in which it will build them, but it is not low-priced: £275,000 as well as area taxes, so £330,000 in the UK.
For any person with only a passing desire in vehicles, the AMG GT Black Series’ existence will have to be laughable. If demolishing racetracks is your thing, acquire a race motor vehicle. If you want to love you on a B-road, a £30k very hot-hatch will do a improved job. If you are only interested in flagrantly exhibiting your wealth, there are other, considerably less back again-breaking strategies to do it. All correct, but let us just rejoice this mad, mad car or truck for what it is: Mercedes flexing its appreciable engineering muscle mass, using a car or truck launched six many years back and surgically improving right up until it will become the final expression of velocity. And anger.
Images: Philipp Rupprecht
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