The new Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door is electric. It makes 1,153 horsepower. It does zero to sixty in two seconds. It also plays fake V8 sounds through the speakers, complete with simulated gear changes, because somebody at AMG apparently decided that admitting what the car actually is would be too much for everyone to handle. There is a lot to unpack here.
Mercedes-AMG has spent the last few decades building its reputation on one thing: the sound of a twin-turbocharged V8 doing what twin-turbocharged V8s do when someone with a heavy right foot points one at a horizon. That sound is not something you can adequately describe in print. You can only experience it, and when you do, you understand immediately why people spend money they do not have on cars they do not need. It is theatrical. It is visceral. It is, depending on your perspective, either the finest sound in all of motoring or the most socially irresponsible thing a car company can produce. Either way, it is real.
The new Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupe does not make that sound. It makes no sound at all, because it is electric, which is of course entirely Mercedes’ right. What is not entirely Mercedes’ right — or at least, what deserves a frank conversation — is the decision to respond to this reality not with acceptance, not with a genuinely new sonic identity, but by programming a computer to play fake V8 sounds through the speakers. With fake gear changes. That actually jolt the car. To make it feel, while you are sitting inside it, as though the V8 is still there. It is not there. It has been replaced by a very large battery pack and three axial flux motors. The V8 sound is a lie being told to you by your own car’s sound system. And everyone involved has decided this is fine.
It is not fine. It is, however, very fast.
“AMG knows deep down in its soul that without the V8 burble, an AMG is just a very fast, very heavy German appliance. So they programmed the computer to pretend otherwise.”
— CAPTAIN ELECTRO. HARSH, BUT NOT ENTIRELY WRONG.
THE NUMBERS, WHICH ARE GENUINELY EXTRAORDINARY
Let us be scrupulously fair about what the new AMG GT 4-Door actually is, because it would be dishonest to pretend the fake sounds invalidate the engineering. They do not. The car is built on AMG.EA, Mercedes-AMG’s first dedicated electric performance architecture, and it uses axial flux motors from Yasa, the British electric motor specialist that Mercedes bought in 2021 and which supplies motor technology to the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One team. Axial flux motors are significantly lighter and more compact than conventional radial motors for a given power output, which matters because the single biggest problem with fast electric cars is that they weigh as much as a small bungalow.
The lineup comprises two versions. The GT 55 produces 805 horsepower and 1,800 Newton metres of torque. The GT 63 produces 1,153 horsepower and 2,000 Newton metres of torque, covers zero to sixty miles per hour in exactly two seconds, and arrives at US dealerships later this year with the 63 following in early 2027. Pricing will be in the six figures. A 600kW peak charging rate makes it officially the fastest-charging non-Chinese electric vehicle currently available, covering ten to eighty percent in eleven minutes. That is a genuinely impressive number and one that addresses the most legitimate practical objection to electric performance cars.
The interior has screens where there should probably be fewer screens, but this is a universal affliction in 2026 and pointing it out is like complaining about the weather. There is a clever central spine that mimics a transmission tunnel and houses key electronics, and what Mercedes calls foot garages tucked between battery modules to improve rear passenger legroom. A hatchback boot and a forty-litre frunk complete the practical brief. The car is 43mm shorter in height than its predecessor and 35.5mm longer overall, with an 89mm longer wheelbase. On paper, this is an extremely capable, extremely practical, extremely fast machine.
THE DESIGN, WHICH IS A MATTER OF SOME DEBATE
Then there is how it looks. The outgoing AMG GT 4-Door was not the most beautiful car on earth but it had a clear character and a visual coherence. The new one looks like it was designed by a committee that could not agree on anything except that there should be more of everything. The front end is extremely busy: multiple light signatures, a large rectangular grille with a complicated horizontal slat pattern, various aerodynamic addenda that serve purposes the press release was happy to explain and the eye is less happy to process. Some journalists have been kind about it. Others have been less so. The rear is genuinely better, with a clean light bar and a sense of proportion that the front conspicuously lacks.
There are also fake exhaust outlets at the rear, which are purely decorative. Nothing exits through them, because there is nothing to exit. They are there because Mercedes-AMG’s designers apparently could not bring themselves to acknowledge, visually, that the car no longer has an exhaust system. They have put exhaust outlets on a car with no exhaust. This is the automotive equivalent of buying a wristwatch with a fake crown that does not wind anything. It is harmless. It is also slightly absurd.
THE FAKE SOUNDS, WHICH WE NEED TO DISCUSS PROPERLY
Back to the elephant in the room. The fake V8 sound is not a subtle enhancement, not a light background presence designed to give the driver some auditory feedback. It is, according to Carscoops who heard it on a prototype video, a full synthesised V8 growl that runs through fake gears as you accelerate, jolting the car at each simulated upshift to reinforce the illusion. AMG calls the system AMG SOUND EXPERIENCE, which is a name that might as well be THINGS THAT ARE NOT HAPPENING. The system attempts to mimic the specific V8 growl of the old AMG GT R. It runs through seven drive modes. In the full AMGForce Sport+ setting, the fake shifts and fake sound are turned up as far as they go. It is, as multiple reviewers have noted, theatrical.
Now. One could argue that the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N does something similar, and it is universally praised for the engagement it creates. One could argue that Porsche has its own Electric Sport Sound, and nobody seems particularly troubled by it. One could argue that sound design in an electric car is simply the modern equivalent of exhaust note tuning in a combustion car, that all car sounds are partially engineered anyway, and that this is no different in principle. These are not bad arguments. They are, in fact, quite reasonable ones.
The counter-argument is this: the Ioniq 5 N invented its own sonic identity. It does not pretend to be something it is not. The AMG GT 4-Door plays a V8 sound because it used to have a V8 and it is embarrassed about not having one any more. The fake exhaust outlets are the same impulse expressed in bodywork. There is a difference between a car being honest about what it is and doing that thing brilliantly, and a car pretending to be something it is no longer. AMG, for all its engineering excellence, has chosen the second approach. Whether that matters to the people who buy this car is, ultimately, a question only they can answer.
REVMAG VERDICT
The Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Electric is a genuinely extraordinary piece of engineering that goes zero to sixty in two seconds, charges to eighty percent in eleven minutes, and makes 1,153 horsepower from three axial flux motors that would have seemed like science fiction a decade ago. It is also a car that plays fake sounds to disguise what it actually is, has decorative exhaust outlets that exhaust nothing, and looks busier at the front than a motorway services on Christmas Eve. None of those things will matter to the people who buy it, who will almost certainly love it. They do matter to us, because we think cars should be honest about themselves. The V8 era at AMG is over. That is a legitimate business decision made in response to real-world regulatory pressure, and we understand it. What we do not understand is why the response to that reality involves a computer program doing an impression of the past rather than the courage to build something genuinely new. The car is brilliant. The self-deception is unnecessary. AMG deserves better than its own fake nostalgia.
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