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

 

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.

 

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!

 

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

 

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.

 

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.

 

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

 

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

Thanks for your thorough write-up.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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

 

Good review.

I fit in the AMG CLE53 and like its utility with rear seats folded. I need the space for transporting stuff like I did in my Wagon from the Southwest to GA and Tampa area. College buddy who works at Nuke Plants has private land just across SC border from his home in Augusta with Deer. Aerospace work buddy from SoCal is an avid Fisherman who also likes to Trap Shoot in Florida. For the low $30K can also own the amazing GR86 and row my own gears for the next 10-15 years in my Retirement using my own on board computer with clutch pedal use optional. My retired buddy from the Missile Range just purchased one after Trading in his Tundra 1794 Edition V8. Helped him negotiate a killer deal since the Alamorgordo Toyota dealership couldn't move a black manual GR86 in the Desert Southwest...he keeps the back seat folded for his two small dogs Daisy and Archie.

A good Spec AMG CLE53 is 3X more expensive than the GR86 but will be a better highway cruiser on my Treks from the Wild West to the Sunbelt with the occasional stop in the DMV. Will take the Train from there to NYC for all future trips and visit my parents buried at Calverton on Long Island.

 

You mentioned that the new gauges are worse than the performance style gauges in your C205 C 63 S, I agree, the older style ones just looks so much better and much better laid out, although not ideal but the gauges can be switched back to classic for a more traditional rev counter look, I don't know if it flashes red close to the rev limiter but it should (but I think you already know that).

 

OT, but I would rather have this sled in 24 months at a 50% discount…

 

Quick follow up. I got back into my C63S Coupe today. Hadn't driven it for over three weeks, so there was a bit of time leading up to driving the GT and now it's been a week. I feel I need to soften some of my initial impressions. I think a lot of what I liked about the new GT comes down to the new PS S 5 tires. I've recently put the BMW Star marked PS4S on my C63. This PS4S is quite different from the regular PS4S I had before and I'm convinced the S 5 is largely based on it or even mostly the same tire. There's a good Tyre Review video showing the differences between the regular PS4S and the BMW Star PS4S. I haven't driven my car a lot yet with the new tires, but today I was reminded that they changed the character of the car quite a bit. The steering response is up a noticeable notch, so I think much of the responsiveness of the new GT can probably be attributed to the tires. Overall I'm back to feeling the new GT is not all that different from my C63. Even the transmission tuning now that it's fresh in my mind and even though AWD was pretty transparent in the GT, true RWD is still on another level. Hooning it around today reminded me why I got the C63 in the first place and for the money, the new GT is just not worth it new. It's practically twice as expensive as what I paid for my C63, but it's not twice the car by any stretch. I'm even not convinced anymore that the active suspension is that much of an improvement and is more of a necessity to hide the weight. They probably could have forgone it if they made the whole car lighter.

 

Interesting, will need to wait till this gen's GT Black Series to come out to know what is a light version of this platform going to be like.

 

Photos of the whole event. Enjoy!

https://1drv.ms/a/s!AuRzDfED_xGBk940...dg3og?e=z6qFJp

 

Short lap video.

 

Km/h ?

 

Looks like it, it was from the AMG Driving Lounge Event after all (if the name is mentioned correctly).

 

Yes, this was in Germany, the instructor on the walky-talky speaks German.