Fake V8 roar, all the power: welcome to the fully-electric Mercedes-AMG GT 4-door Coupe

The new Mercedes-AMG GT 63 4-Door Coupé is a technovore. The kind of vehicle that chews through technology in a series of massive bytes. An electric car with big power and many modes. Which makes TG nervous. A pure electric AMG that relies on tech for the thrills? For a company that has been at the forefront of liquid dinosaur fuel and ringfenced explosions for decades?

It all sounds a bit sensible from the get-go. The GT 4-Door Coupé can charge its battery from 10-80 per cent state-of-charge in just 11 minutes, adding 268-miles of range in ten. That’s an 800-volt architecture and NCMA (Nickel/Cobalt/Manganese/Aluminium) battery with super-trick oil cooling making heavy arguments for electric convenience. It has a relatively decent boot at 415-litres and a 41-litre frunk, can seat several passengers with ease and can manage 370-miles of range at the low end, more like 432 if you gone for the lower-powered GT 55. All of which are usually the last things people take note of.

Why? Because in top-spec ’63’ format, the GT 4-door Coupé runs over 700bhp ambiently, with 1,153bhp and 1,475lb ft of torque available should you need it. Though ‘need’ is a relative term here, because the situations in which you really need 0-62mph in less than 2.5 seconds and 186mph top end are probably quite rare. It weighs just shy of 2.5-tonnes, though that doesn’t seem to to matter. You can see how rear-seat accommodations and shopping stowage can get ignored. Priorities.

That’s what comes across when you spend a bit of time prodding and poking the GT 4-door; a sense that a lot of thought has gone into this thing. Which it should, seeing as this is AMG’s first 'proper' outing as a fully-electric vehicle (2013's SLS AMG Electric Drive was basically a unicorn). Not so much early-adoption as middle-aged. If you’re going to take your time, you might as well do it right. One thing is for certain: this cannot be just another neck-testing electric sports car, it has to be something more dynamic and emotional. It has to be more AMG. Which is where it gets interesting.

It starts with a bit of corporate interest. Back in 2021 Mercedes-Benz and AMG acquired a UK company based in Oxford called YASA. A company that was leading the charge in ‘axial flux’ electric motors. Essentially they’re pancake-shaped (dinner-plate, but about four inches thick) EV motors that are smaller, lighter and more powerful than conventional units by far. Perfect for a fast EV, with the slight issue that they tend to be noisy. Not so much of a problem in their previous installations - you’ll find YASA nutritional supplements in the Lamborghini Temerario and Revuelto, the Ferrari 296 GTB and SF90 Stradale, even the Koenigsegg Regera - because they also have engines with notable noises. But AMG saw the potential.

The GT 4-door is therefore the first car solely-powered by YASA tech, if you ignore Merc’s own Concept GT XX, a car that holds more than 25 world records for speed and efficiency - itself the testing ground and progenitor of the car in the pictures.

So the big horsepower comes from three axial flux units, one in the front and two in the back, to give all-wheel drive and mega torque-vectoring capabilities. Traction and dynamics can be altered at the flick of a switch, the GT 4-door featuring AMG’s ‘Race Engineer’ system that allows you to do three things from a triplet of cockpit rotary dials. The first, Response Control, has several stages of throttle sensitivity. The second, Agility Control, alters the car’s virtual wheelbase adjusting the rotation characteristics around the vertical axis - basically, you can make it feel like it has a shorter or longer wheelbase, so make it more understeery, neutral or oversteery. The third is a nine-stage traction control function. So you can decide how scary you want to get through nine stages of fear.

But that’s not all. The GT 4-Door has all the usual AMG modes (Eco, Slippery, Individual, Sport, Sport+ and Race), as well as AMGForceSport+, which has a fake gearbox accessed through the shift paddles, complete with a torque interruption to make it feel real, a noise synthesised from the AMG GT R that reacts to every single input or lift, and various other ‘emotional’ touchpoints that try to make AMG ICE customers feel at home.

The interior itself is a bit like a Berlin nightclub on a Saturday night; lots of silver and black, with deep red lighting accents - though to be fair, you can change the colours. The basics: 10.2in driver’s screen melded into a 14in screen angled towards the driver, with another 14-incher aimed at the passenger. Many things in screens. It’s a welter of slight overload which dims with exposure. The Race Engineer knobs are on the centre console and angled towards the driver, and yes, you’ll be able to adjust them by feel rather than prodding at a touchscreen. Which is somewhat of a relief.

All that before we’ve even mentioned the look of the thing, which is… interesting. Not the immediacy of the GT XX, but something more mature. Based on the AMG.EA architecture, it's over five metres long and nearly two metres wide. Range Rover floorplan, then. There’s a big, concave, vertically-slatted grille (with optional lighting), star motifs everywhere, and LED headlights. The profile is slick but bulky, the rear a Panda mask wrapping around the back of the car and punctuated by six afterburner star-shaped rear lights - which weirdly reminds of the Ferrari 458 Speciale end-to-end mesh, except …bigger. Ok, so you might have to squint, but it’s there.

Wheels vary from 19 to 21in, and it’s got moveable aero that AMG is calling ‘Aerokinetics’ - which itself comes in two versions. Standard stuff includes moveable aero louvres in the front grille and wheelarches and a multi-stage rear wing that delivers both downforce and stability. But there’s a racy variant that has an extendable Venturi element underneath the car to accelerate the ventral air and suck it down onto a racetrack, the more civilian option is an extendable rear valance/splitter which extends the aero profile for more efficiency. It’ll need to be tested to see how much difference it really makes, but it looks exceptionally cool. There’s also active rear-steer and air-suspension with two stages of ride height, so a lot going on.

The market might be faltering for high-power electric fast things, but it’s not the execution that seems in peril here. The GT 4-Door Coupé has what we might expect: stand out technology, really interesting ideas about what ‘emotion’ really means in an electric performance car (nod to Hyundai here, and the ’N’ Series cars), some decently space age looks and thinking. Now all we need to do is drive it to see how it stacks up.

Mercedes-AMG GT 63 4-Door Coupé (GT 55 also available)
Price: £TBC (the AMG GT 4-Dr 63 e-Performance petrol V8 in last-gen was £178,705)
Transmission: Triple-motor, all-wheel drive AMG Performance 4MATIC+
Power: 1,169hp (1,153bhp), continuous output 721hp (711bhp), 1,475lb ft of torque
Performance: 0-62mph in 2.4 seconds, 186mph top speed
Battery and charging: 370-432—mile range, 106kWh (net) NCMA (Nickel/Cobalt/Manganese/Aluminium), DC charging at up to 600 kW, 800 volt, 10–80 per cent SoC in 11 min, 268 miles added in 10 mins, std 11kW AC
Boot: 415-litres, 41-litre frunk
Weight: 2,460kg (depending on spec)