Ti Drives: Mercedes-AMG GT 63 SUV

Some indication of the depth of madness into which the world has now descended is provided by the fact that I’d gone to Germany primarily to drive what is by at least one measure the fastest road car ever created, the astonishing AMG One I wrote about on Thursday, and it wasn’t even the most powerful car I drove that day, its 1063bhp eclipsed entirely by the 1153bhp of this awkward-looking SUV.

That’s more than either the top of the range Cayenne Electric or Lotus Eletre can generate, and it comes in a package weighing almost 2.7 tonnes, which is more than a Rolls-Royce Phantom sitting on an extended wheelbase. And so good is it at deploying its power, it will hit 62mph from rest in 2.5 seconds, it being quicker out the blocks than even the more powerful McLaren W1 hypercar carrying not much more than half the weight. One day, we will look back at this stuff and barely believe it happened.

You’ll be glad also to know that this five-seat family SUV comes with physical controls offering multiple settings for throttle response, traction control intervention point and, thank goodness, the amount of electronic assistance you might want while executing vast drifts with your children in the back. Some might say such features are largely performative in nature, there more for show than action, but there’s no question how well they work. As we were describing neat circles of burnt Michelin on the test track floor, it was ably demonstrated to me how this car could go from being a cuddly kitten to a Bengal tiger, just at the turn of a dial. Utterly irrelevant to the use case of course, but very impressive nonetheless.

As was what I managed to glean from my short drive in the car. When not directed to throw the car all over the place, the three British-built YASA axial flux motors (two at the back, one at the front) provide silent, effortless and astounding performance. Put it into Sport+ mode (informally known by at least one MB employee as ‘insane V8 mode’, and you’d convince anyone who didn’t know otherwise that the good old 6.2-litre AMG bent eight had been dug out of its no-longer-final resting place and reinstalled in its nose.

Entirely manufactured though it is, the sound is fabulous, popping and banging on the overrun so violently you can feel it through your seat. And yes, of course that shouldn’t be possible in a car without an engine of any kind, but you reckon without AMG’s dedication to creating the illusion. In this case, that involved going to the trouble of actually installing little motors in the front seats that oscillate in time with every synthesised pop and bang.

More prosaically, it comes with a massive 128kWh battery, capable of charging at 710kW (good luck finding one of those in your local services), offering a range of up to a claimed 435 miles. There are less powerful versions too – a GT 53 with 536bhp and a GT 55 with 805bhp, which will probably be enough for most. Am I the only one looking at a middle of the range SUV with over 800bhp and wondering what the world is coming to?

There will, of course be plenty for whom a car like this – one of such excessive power and weight – will be a complete turn off. And would I give up 500bhp to shed literally a tonne of weight and gain a proper V8? In a heartbeat. While possessing almost unlimited powers to make me both laugh and gasp, it is not a car to which I instinctively warmed. Maybe greater exposure in a more representative and relevant environment would turn that around, I don’t know. But surely a wildly powerful electric SUV that has to simulate the sounds you’d like to hear it make naturally is not the way for AMG to usher in its seventh decade.

However, I suspect it has other plans for that: it is an open secret that Mercedes and AMG’s volte face back in the direction of the internal combustion engine includes a brand new V8, inevitably with a hybrid attached to get it past the legislation. So, imagine that, thundering away under the bonnet of an all-new E-Class estate. To me, it is there, and not here, where the heart and soul of AMG can be found. It is a territory it should never have abandoned in the first place, and one to which it cannot return too soon.