503hp

Hi all,

Well, I took a test drive of the 2024 Mercedes-AMG GT 55, and it was both a massive improvement over my 2016 AMG GT S and a big letdown.

(As always, I wrote a comparison review of the two GTs on my blog.)

As you know, the new AMG GT 55 added 600 lbs of luxury, technology, and performance hardware. I was afraid that all this new weight would make the car piggish in the corners, but in my test drive, I found that the new car is just as quick and capable as my 2016 AMG GT S.

The V8 is ferocious (the GT 55 makes 469 hp) and even sounds better now, thanks to some augmentation via the stereo. The new transmission is on point, and the chassis has banished body roll and improved ride comfort. I couldn't feel the rear steering or torque vectoring AWD doing their work, but these technologies undoubtedly enabled the 4300-pound GT 55 to cut through the corners as fast as my 2016 GT S.

When it comes to comfort, the GT 55 has aced it. Massage seats, seat cooling, a much more supple suspension, lane-following cruise control, and great cabin NVH...the list of improvements is long! Very little road noise makes it into the cockpit, but plenty of engine noise is heard to keep your blood pumping.

Also, the new GT's trunk space is astonishing. I completely believe that a bike could fit in the trunk with its front wheel off and the rear seats folded flat.

Those are some of the ways in which the GT 55 is a massive improvement over the old AMG GT S. And the big letdown?

The old car's raw chassis feedback, tactile steering, and mid-engined dynamics are all gone. My 2016 GT S oozes with feedback and leaps into the corners. The new GT 55 dials back the feedback by half and returns to feeling front-engined rather than mid-engined.

So, while the new GT 55 is awesome, it has a different mission than the old GT S. The new car seems built for epic road trips or mind-numbing commutes. People who love sexy sports cars with growling V8s will still be incredibly pleased. But people who want the best steering feel and chassis feedback will cherish the original AMG GTs.

Have you driven the new car? Do you agree?

Best,
Mike

superswiss

Yes, the new GT is an actual grand tourer not just by name now. I've said this before. They've added a bunch of hardware to still make it handle when pushed, but it is a car that now makes more sense for long distance road trips at great speeds. The kinda trips you can make on the German Autobahn. I'm currently in Europe and will be driving the GT 63 at Mercedes' own test center in Immedingen on Friday. I've driven the GT S, GT R and GT BS at similar events, so I have a pretty good baseline. Looking forward to driving it and getting a feel for it. I'm not interested in buying one, though, as its mission isn't all that different from my '19 C63S Coupe. Just heavier, more power and newer and not to mention significantly more expensive. Otherwise it has the same engine layout, same transmission. Also, AWD isn't something I'm keen on living in California. RWD in the C63 and previous GT is simply more fun. The new GT is faster off the line and easier to drive fast thanks to AWD, but that takes away from the fun. I've had my share of AWD performance cars, and they are simply not as much fun. It inevitably numbs the steering and reduces feedback. Drift mode is cool on paper, but given that you have to turn off all the safety systems for it, it isn't something many will use often, especially not on public roads.

503hp

Ooh, please report back on your GT 63 experience at the test center! That sounds delightful!

Good point on the C63 occupying the same space as the GT 55/63. It's true that AMG already had a fast GT coupe!

boosted20v

The bottom line is MB did not build this car for current AMG GT owners. It's a good car for what it is but like the updated C63 it's catering to a different audience. Throttle House said it best at the end of their review MB already had an AMG GT 63 and it was the outgoing C63s. Having previously owned a c63 after my drive of the GT 55 I walked away feeling sportier E 63. It's a good car, just different. That being said my wife would like it way more than my GT as she hates riding in it. To stiff and to low. lol

W205C43PFL

In a nutshell, this should had been the new C 63 S but way cheaper, this vehicle is MB's way of trying to upsell W205 C 63 S owners. As another forum member already mentioned on another thread.

superswiss

Just got back from Europe and had a great AMG Experience day on Friday at the Mercedes Test Center. Sorry, we weren't allowed to take pictures outside of the staging area due to all the proprietary stuff roaming around. It's an impressive facility. The whole thing used to be a tank training ground for the German Army until Mercedes bought it and turned it into their test center. They built a 60 km road network on it with road conditions from all over the world to test their cars, along with a quite technical racetrack that borrows features from many tracks around the world, and a high speed banked oval. We didn't get to drive on the latter and only drove on the normal roads to get to and from the staging area to the racetrack and the dynamic driving area. They had a photographer, so we are gonna get photos from the whole event eventually. We had one causality with one of the participants flying off the track and ditching one of the GTs in the gravel. They didn't get to participate anymore for the rest of the day, so my co-driver and I ended up each getting our own cars in the afternoon and didn't have to switch drivers throughout.

I walked away positively impressed with the GT63. I know we all complained about it one way or the other. There's the weight, lack of dry sump, less focus on sport etc. etc., but I have to say it's a phenomenal car. The combination of rear wheel steering, active suspension and the new Pilot Sport S 5 tires make it an amazing car on the track as well as on the road. The breath of it is quite impressive and it hides the weight very well. It was flat in Race mode going around the track, rotating on a dime thanks to the rear wheel steering and AWD is fairly transparent. If I didn't know it was AWD I wouldn't have picked up on it. At the same time driving it in C on normal roads is a true GT experience. The car sounds great, although a bit raspy, but very different sound from previous AMGs, including the GT BS. At times it sounded like gravel was moving around in the exhaust and both my co-driver and I commented that the sound could get tiring on a long journey. It was quite loud inside. So a bit of a mixed bag in the sound department, but great to see it wasn't muted.

Loved how AMG further improved the 9-MCT transmission. I love it in my C63S Coupe, but in the GT they ironed out some of the rough edges mine occasionally has. In Race mode it slammed in the gears like there was no tomorrow, but in C it was super smooth. Mine occasionally jerks and tends to upshift quickly in C, whereas in the GT it shifted smoother at low speeds and held the gears longer, but that's also possibly due to the cars getting flogged around mostly. Would have to see how the transmission adapts with more normal street driving.

The most impressive thing was how responsive the steering was. With RWS, it feels like you are driving a short wheelbase hatchback. It's very nimble on normal roads. Much more nimble than the old GT and even my C63S. That virtual shortening of the wheelbase makes this a super fun car just driving around. The old GT was never really at home in daily driving. This car does both the daily driving and the track well. On the downside, there wasn't all that much feedback in the steering, but the moment you turned the wheel. the car changed direction like a racecar.

There are a couple of negatives, though. We used the GTs to drift as the last discipline of the day, and this thing is hard to drift. Even the instructor had difficulties. As I said before, drift mode is cool on paper, but with almost 600 hp going to the rear wheels and the rear wheel steering, it makes it very hard to drift. The car I was driving actually threw a rear wheel steering error almost at the very end and it no longer allowed drift mode to be activated after that, so I had to call it quits. My C63S is much better at drifting. Partly due to less power going to the rear wheels, but also you can use the 9-stage traction control to aid with the drift.

The second issue was that it was raining part of the day and getting in and out of it resulted in soiling the back on my pant legs. It has quite a wide door sill, so I always ended up making contact with it wiping the dirty water off with my pants. Not an ideal car for when it gets wet.

The third issue is the interior. On the positive side, the GT gets the previous generation AMG performance seats. Same seats I have in my C63S. The new C63 and CLE 53 get the new generation AMG performance seats, which I think are no longer made by Recaro. I didn't like the new seats in the CLE and C as much. They are quite a bit harder and somewhat narrow right where my butt is. I'm 5'11"/176lbs, so not big, but I preferred the seats in the GT. Took me a while to figure out that to adjust the side bolsters, you now have to go into MBUX to do it. Quite stupid as I frequently adjust the side bolsters and having physical buttons on the side of the seat is much better for that.

But the general issue I had with the interior is the lack of physical buttons and the stupid capacitive buttons on the steering wheel. Not new to me as I had several loaners already with the new setup. Out of all the new MB cars, though, I found the placement of the screen the best in the GT and the SL for that matter. It's very easy to reach and due to the low seating position and the screen being closer to the driver, it is relatively easy to operate while driving. However, I did not like the new instrument cluster graphics. Way too busy and the important information gets lost. What happened to having a proper rev gauge front and center? The new animated rev gauge is so unintuitive to read that I kept running into the rev limiter. I drove mostly in manual mode as I do my own car and even the shift light animations weren't as intuitive. I didn't even notice them at first. The instrument cluster is just too much of a gimmick now instead of focusing on what matters.

In summary, I'm kinda torn now. I initially expected this car to not be all that much different from my C63S Coupe, but I was wrong. I loved it overall. The previous GT was great on the track, but not great on normal roads. This thing kinda does it all. The big elephant in the room is the price and the interior ergonomics/user experience. As great as this car is, it isn't worth the price AMG wants for it, IMHO. I just don't drive enough as it is, so I may pick up a used one at some point if my C63 starts to become a maintenance issue.

W205C43PFL

Thanks for sharing your impressions! Glad to hear you had fun like the previous events.

Drone_S213

@superswiss What are your thoughts on GT55 with detuned TTV8?

Thanks for your thorough write-up.

superswiss

So, I haven't driven the GT 55, but as far as I know it has everything the GT 63 has, just with less power. My initial concern would be the power to weight ratio. The GT 63 has more power than the previous GT S had, so that makes up for the additional weight. Probably similar power to weight ratio as the GT S had. The GT 55 on the other hand has the same power as the previous base GT coupe had, yet it's heavier. I would say if you consider it mostly for grand touring and daily driving, then the GT 55 is probably all you'd need. To really use the power the GT 63 offers, you need to take it on the track or have access to the German Autobahn. I think the GT 55 is still too expensive, especially if you start optioning it up and the price gap to an equally optioned 63 starts to shrink.

Drone_S213

Athens GA has a matte blue GT55 with premium white interior for $160K. Unfortunately they didn't open it up on show room floor for me but let me checkout their AMG CLE53 Coupe to my heart's content... Guess I need to be Kirby Smart? LOL

Same New car Manager is aware that back in 2020 I drove down the road to Duluth GA and ordered my 2021 AMG Wagon since they had an allocation.

The AMG CLE53 would be nice in a few years as CPO...its more AMG C-Class than AMG E-Class in my opinion.

superswiss

Check out my impression thread of the C63SE. I also wrote about the CLE 53. It was the biggest surprise of the day. I liked the CLE 53 quite a bit.

https://mbworld.org/forums/c63-c43-a...ve-c63-se.html