Mercedes-Benz GT AMG to arrive this year

The next range-topping sports car from Mercedes-Benz, and likely to be dubbed GT AMG, has already been spied testing near AMG’s headquarters in Offenbach, Germany.

The Porsche 911 rival is a poorly kept secret. Mercedes-Benz head of sales and marketing, Ola Kallenius, says he’s all-too aware of that, admitting the model is indeed set to make its world debut, and perhaps even sooner than we first thought.

“There’s going to be another sports car that we will launch in the second-half of this year, [but] it will not be a direct successor to the SLS,” said Kallenius. “The SLS was not only an icon in its own right... it was a game changer,  and after the success of the SLS, [we thought] ‘why stop there?’.”

The follow-up to one of Mercedes’ most pivotal sportscars was a carefully considered move, and one Kallenius says required its own identity.

“During my time at AMG, we made a decision to say ‘you can’t just do one Gullwing after the other’,” he explained. “It has to stand on its own in automotive history, almost like an icon car of its time... and that’s what you’re going to see in the second-half of this year.”

The GT AMG, which bears a silhouette quite similar to that of the SLS, is rumoured to be powered by an augmented version of the 350kW and 620Nm 4.0-litre twin-turbocharged V8 that will be found under the bonnet of the upcoming C 63 AMG, but with a transaxle arrangement similar to that of the outgoing SLS.

“The successor car... is [to be] the combination of the confidence of the Mercedes-Benz brand, and the performance dimension of what AMG brings to the package, that makes it such a unique combination,” Kallenius concluded.