2027 Mercedes-AMG GT SUV review: Quick drive

Slide in behind the wheel of the Mercedes-AMG GT63 SUV, switch it on and twist the knurled knob under the right-hand spoke of the steering wheel until the little screen on it shows S+. An engine rumbles into life.

Play with the accelerator pedal. Instantly you’re surrounded by a hard-edged V8 soundtrack that rises and falls in sync with your right foot, the needle of the tacho on the digital dash effortlessly swinging back and forth towards the 7200rpm redline.

It sounds like you’re warming up a snarling Mercedes-AMG GT GT3 race car, getting ready to run with Max Verstappen on the Nürburgring Nordschleife. Except you’re not. The 2027 Mercedes-AMG GT63 SUV is powered by electrons, not hydrocarbons.

The second model to be built on the high-tech, high-performance AMG.EA electric vehicle architecture, the GT SUV shares not just its essential hardware with the muscular electric-powered GT 4 Door Coupe but, as we discovered after an exclusive prototype drive at Mercedes-Benz’s Immendingen proving ground, its essential character, too. The GT SUV might be pitched as a family vehicle, but it’s for families that like to party hard when the mood takes them.

“Pull up here, and you can do a full acceleration run,” said the AMG test driver from the back seat. Well, it would be rude not too, I thought as I brought the big yellow GT63 SUV to a halt on the access road to the handling track inside Immendingen's giant high-speed loop.

We’re in Sport+. I tug the right-hand paddle to engage first gear, keep my left foot on the brake pedal, and push the accelerator to the floor. The guttural V8 rumble becomes a booming roar, vibrations building through the back of the seat before what sounds like a rapid-fire artillery barrage erupts through the cabin. Rev-limiter. I sidestep my left foot.

The thrust is instant and intense, crushing the four of us back into our seats. The tacho needle zings around to the 7200rpm redline and I flick the right-hand paddle again as the upshift warning light strobes on the digital dash. Second, third, fourth. The mighty V8 bellow barely pauses for breath as the upshifts hit home with an oily thump. 

It’s all fake, of course. But in Sport+ mode the Mercedes-AMG GT63 SUV sounds and feels exactly as if there’s a monstrous 6.3-litre naturally aspirated V8 under the bonnet driving all four wheels through AMG’s bulletproof nine-speed Speedshift MCT wet-clutch transmission. I shake my head and laugh out loud. Welcome to AMG’s theatre of the absurd.

The Mercedes-AMG GT63 SUV is not just the most powerful SUV ever from AMG, faster than the GLE63 S and meaner than the G63; it’s currently the world’s most powerful SUV, full stop. In Race mode the GT63 SUV pumps out 860kW of power and a titanic 2000Nm of torque, and AMG claims it will get from 0 to 100km/h half a second quicker than the F1-engined AMG ONE hypercar, stopping the clock in just 2.4 seconds.

As it happens, I’d just done a few laps of the Immendingen handling track in an AMG ONE. Okay, this particular ONE was a well-worn proving ground mule, with 39,000km on its little V6. But it certainly didn’t slam you into the seat with the quite same ferocity as the GT63 SUV when you punched the throttle.

The AMG.EA architecture was designed from the outset to enable both low ride heights and low seating, and so the GT SUV’s driving position feels quite car-like, but with all-round visibility that’s much better than in the low-slung GT 4 Door Coupe.

The GT63’s interior has the same extrovert  21^st century techno-muscle vibe of the GT 4 Door, with carbon-fibre, digital screens, splashes of metal and brightly colored stitching everywhere, but it has a rear seat that comfortably accommodates tall adults. And while the GT 4 Door’s cabin closes in around you, the SUV’s interior feels light and airy by comparison.

Apart from that full-bore acceleration run, we didn’t get a chance to do any real fast driving at Immendingen. But the steering in the GT63, which was fitted with Hankook Ion tires on 23-inch rims – 285/35 up front and 325/30 items at the rear – felt concise and nicely weighted, and brake pedal smooth and easily modulated.

In Comfort or Sport mode, the AMG GT63 SUV feels like just another immensely fast electric-powered SUV; all instant-on torque and big-tyre traction. The steering wheel paddles allow you to switch through five levels of regenerative braking, from a coast mode that will keep the GT SUV sailing down the road when you lift off the accelerator to a one-pedal driving mode that will slow the car at up to 0.68g the moment you lift off, sending up to 600kW back into the battery.

Race mode ensures maximum power and torque are on tap at all times. In other modes a single pull on both steering-wheel paddles unlocks an additional boost of power for a total of 63 seconds.

Selecting Sport+ mode not only switches on that iconic AMG V8 soundtrack and dials it all the way up to 11; it also stiffens the GT SUV’s sinews and sharpens its responses. What you hear in Sport+ mode is a genuine V8 sound digitised from recordings of actual AMG engines. But the effect is an illusion, generated by an intelligent real-time mixing system that uses more than 1600 sound files to sonically interpret the relationship between throttle position and the torque load at the driving wheels. 

Sport+ mode’s V8 sound and fury and manual shift capability is not a gimmick. It’s a genuinely useful driver’s tool that helps you judge the rates of acceleration and braking as accurately as you can in a car with a high-performance internal combustion engine.

And, as it deftly interrupts the torrent of torque from the e-motors on the upshifts, and initiates finely calculated dollops of regen on the downshifts, it can be used to balance the GT63 SUV’s handling through corners. Sport+ is more than just party mode; it’s the mode you select when you want to hustle the big GT SUV along a winding road.

And the fun doesn’t stop there. Three rotary controllers on the centre console are the interface for what Mercedes-Benz calls the AMG Race Engineer. The Response Control controller adjusts the sharpness of the response of the electric motors to commands from your right foot.

Agility Control, which is only active with the ESP switched off, adjusts the powertrain’s front-to-rear torque distribution to send up to 90 per cent through the rear wheels and change the GT SUV’s chassis balance from slight understeer through neutral handling to controlled oversteer. The Traction Control controller, which is also only activated with the ESP switched off, adjusts the level of traction control intervention through nine stages, just as in the AMG GT 63 Pro and the AMG race cars. 

Will the AMG GT63 SUV drift? Oh yes. Mercedes-Benz made us sit in the passenger seat while the test driver showed us how this 2500kg SUV could be made to pirouette around cones like a gymkhana king, and it seemed utterly effortless.

The AMG GT SUV will be available in three different states of tune. Like the heavy-hitting GT63, the mid-range GT55 has three axial-flux e-motors developed by Mercedes-Benz-owned Yasa specifically for AMG, but their total system output has been dialed back to 600kW and 1860Nm.

As in the GT63, the front motor is a booster, engaged only when additional power or traction is needed at the front axle, decoupling under light loads for efficiency. The entry-level GT53, which is unlikely to come to Australia, has just two e-motors – Mercedes-Benz designed and engineered radial flow units used in mainstream Benz EVs, that generate a mere 400kW and 800Nm.

AMG’s Active Ride Control multi-link suspension, which features triple-adjustable air springs and semi-active roll stabilisation that uses interconnected hydraulics in place of physical anti-roll bars, is standard. So is rear-wheel steering. The GT63 gets carbon-ceramic brakes, with steel rotors standard on the GT55 and GT53. 

The AMG GT SUV’s lightweight high-performance battery pack was developed in-house at AMG with help from engineers at Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains in Brixworth, England, where the complex powertrains for the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 cars are designed and built.

Its cells feature a unique nickel cobalt manganese aluminium (NCMA) combination in the cathode and an anode with high silicon content. The tall and thin cells, which are encased in lightweight laser-welded aluminium housings that also provide better electrical and heat conductivity, are cooled by an electrically non-conductive oil. 

The battery used in the GT55 and GT53 is the same as in the GT 4 Door Coupe, with a usable capacity of 107kWh. For the GT63, AMG engineers added four extra modules to the battery pack – basically filling in the hollows created to give the GT 4 Door Coupe’s rear seat passengers room for their feet – that boosts the usable capacity to 127kWh. AMG.EA’s 800V electrical architecture enables DC fast-charging speeds of up to 710kW, which can add up to 450km of range in just 10 minutes.

Our time with the AMG GT63 SUV was very limited. We want to learn more about how it rides on the road, and how it handles at the limit on the track. We want to more thoroughly explore the capabilities of the AMG Race Engineer, to find out whether it’s a real driver’s tool or a digital gimmick. But we had enough time behind the wheel to learn one thing: Mercedes-AMG appears to have created a new benchmark for high-performance SUVs.

Yes, it’s powered by fast-moving electrons rather than high-octane hydrocarbons. But that’s irrelevant. If you love driving, and love driving something that’s big and loud and fast and thoroughly entertaining, you’re going to love the Mercedes-AMG GT63 SUV.

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