Mercedes-Benz AMG GT 4-Door Coupe review

Pretty full on. Three giant screens make up the dash, one for the gauge cluster, one for the main infotainment and an optional one for the passenger to play Angry Birds on. Which, incidentally, cameraman Louis attempted for all of 10 seconds on the twisty mountain roads before turning green. Shock.

Those screens are bookended by two jazzy silver air vents which are backlit and ominously pulse red. As do the three rotary dials of the AMG Race Engineer and the cupholders. There’s lots of carbon fibre, intricately stitched leather, and a busy steering wheel, trimmed in alcantara on the 63, and adorned with many haptic buttons, plus two more small screens to let you know what driving mode you’re in.

The overall effect is gaudy and overstimulating, much like the exterior design. Maybe we’re just being grumpy luddites but we liked hot Mercs a lot better when there was a touch of subtlety about them. Subtle this is not – it’s like being in an AMG-themed nightclub.

And while we’ve bemoaned Merc’s “all screen everything” approach plenty of times before, it particularly jars in this performance car. Isn’t it a bit weird to build a focused driving machine, then furnish its dash with a million distractions? We’re not asking for S1 Lotus Elise sparsity, but a few fewer screens and more buttons would go a long way.

Speaking of, while we appreciated the pleasingly tactile rotary dials that make up the AMG Race Engineer, we’d happily bury those settings in a menu and use those dials for more commonly used functions like fan speed, temperature and volume.

Still, material quality is high, the seats are excellent and rear legroom is surprisingly decent. The 415-litre boot is smaller than that of a C-Class, but that’s the trade-off of a swoopy coupe shape; you do at least get another 41 litres under the bonnet. It’s an undeniably high quality interior – just an acquired taste. To put it mildly.