AMG GT four-door starts at $250K

A feisty new four-door fighter has gate-crashed the Bathurst pitlane.

As the race-bred contenders for the Bathurst 12 Hour GT3 race were being fettled at Mount Panorama, they were upstaged by the arrival of the first dedicated four-door car from the Mercedes-AMG hot house.

The GT 4-Door is the half-brother to the GT Coupe which sits at the apex of the AMG line-up, at least until the launch of the AMG One hypercar hybrid later this year.

The GT 4-Door will be sold in Australia as either an inline 3.0-litre six-cylinder GT 53 from $249,900 or the 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8-engined GT 63 from $349,900. Deliveries should commence in June.

The 63 has a headlining 470kW and 900 Newton-metres of torque.

Both cars have Benz’s 4Matic all-wheel drive package, tweaked by AMG, with a nine-speed automatic and a full suite of go-faster and luxury equipment.

“If you want to take your family in a real sports car, it’s the right choice,” says Maro Engel, the race ace who drove the GT 4-Door onto Mount Panorama for its local debut.

The car was air-freighted to Australia especially for its unveiling at Bathurst, where Mercedes-AMG is hosting hundreds of owners and guests at one of its biggest customer events of the year.

The first dedicated family car from the AMG stable is a half-brother to the GT, after a development program that ran parallel but down a slightly different road. The two-door Coupe has a bespoke platform that shares a lot of its basics with the previous-generation SLS, while the four-door has its roots in the E-Class wagon.

The AMG tweaking for the 4-Door includes a huge carbon-fibre strengthening panel in the tail, linking the rear suspension mounts, as well as the usual work on engine management, transmission, brakes, wheels and exhaust.

“The new AMG GT 4-Door Coupe blends the impressive racetrack dynamism of our two-door sports car with maximum suitability for everyday use. It will attract new customers for Mercedes-AMG,” says AMG boss, Tobias Moers.

The 4-Door can be ordered with a five-seater rear bench or a four-seater layout with individual rear buckets, the layout chosen for the Bathurst display car.

The headline numbers for the 4-Door are as solid as expected, with a 3.2sec sprint to 100km/h for the GT 63 S.

The package for the 4-Door starts with air suspension and 20-inch alloys, Burmester sound, performance front seats and the latest AMG steering wheel on the 53, jumping up to 21-inch alloys, rear-wheel steering and carbon fibre trim on the 63.

Option packs on the 53 include exterior chrome at $2500, exterior carbon fibre at $9500 and the night package at $2500, while the 63 can be ordered with the same extras and the aerodynamics package at $7300 and carbon fibre II package at $11,600.