Bring The Family

We test drive the all-new Mercedes- AMG GT 63 S 4-Door Coupe in Austin, Texas, and find that it handles the track just as well as it does the highway.

- Gautam Sharma

THIS IS LAUGH-OUT-loud fun. We’re at the Circuit of the Americas – which hosts the US round of the Formula One championship – and, up ahead, five-time German touring car champion Bernd Schneider is flinging his silver Mercedes- AMG GT R around the track as though it’s a qualifying session for a Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM) race.

I’m perched in the brand-new AMG GT 63 S 4-Door and doing everything possible to keep up with the German race ace that is serving as our pacemaker in the low-slung two door coupe. On paper, the odds are very much in Schneider’s favour, given that the luxury-lined saloon I’m driving stretches more than 5m in length and weighs over two tonnes. Yet the GT 63 S 4-Door hustles around the circuit with deceptive pace and agility. It’s performing well beyond my expectations of a big luxo chariot that can seat up to five occupants and stow 461 litres of luggage.

The new Mercedes- AMG saloon flagship was conceived to fulfil a specific job description – to take on the Porsche Panamera Turbo while leveraging the cachet of the two-door AMG GT that sits atop the three-pointed star’s high-performance range. That said, the GT 4-Door has more in common from a mechanical point of view with the E-Class than the two-door GT, as the aluminium spaceframe chassis of the latter could not be stretched to the shape and dimensions required of a large four-door saloon with a spacious boot.