Car_and_Driver_USA_July_2017

Poster Boy
It may not seem like a supercar, but the Mercedes-AMG
GT roadster provides similar thrills at a savings. _by Jared Gall
THERE ARE A LOT OF GOOD POSTER-FODDER cars elsewhere
in this issue. They’re the very reason regular paper was deemed
inadequately glossy and the cogs of innovation meshed to produce
a sturdier, shinier poster stock and cardboard tubes to ship it in.
Cars like those belong on posters on kids’ walls.
But so do cars like this. In C trim, the Mercedes-AMG GT is,
after all, a 550-hp roadster with its engine packaged entirely
between the axles. You’ll notice when you pop the hood and remove
the AMG “engine” cover—yes, signed by the real, live person in
Swabia who built the engine—that it isn’t
covering anything much more exciting
than the coolant overflow bottle. The 4.0-
liter V-8 is swaddled in a heat blanket to
shield the hood from the thermal energy
generated by the two turbochargers
wedged into its valley and sits well behind
the engine cover—indeed, well abaft the
front axle. So even though the driver sits
between the engine and the rear axle, the
AMG carries its powerplant in the same
midsection as any of the 500-plus-hp
Makes
achieving and
maintaining big
speed easy.
Doesn’t
quite have the
character or
bandwidth of
Porsche’s 911
range.
mid-engined roadsters on sale today, a
list that starts at the Audi R8 and never
so much as flirts with drudgery.
You could certainly call the cars’
performance stats fodder figures. Even
in base GT trim, the 4.0-liter makes
469 horsepower. There will eventually
be a 515-hp GT S roadster, but this time
around we bookended the ragtop range
by driving both the 469-hp GT and the
stonking 550-hp GT C. In all guises, the V-8 is connected to a rearmounted
seven-speed automatic transaxle that can be manipulated
by paddle shifters, should you choose to operate it yourself.
To better control its higher output, the C borrows quite a few
pieces from the lunatic R model that sits at the top of the GT coupe
hierarchy. Most of them are concentrated in the back of the car.
The C shares its wider rear fenders, rear-steering system, tighter
gear ratios, numerically higher final drive, and electronically controlled
limited-slip differential with the R. It also borrows active
shutters from the top dog’s front fascia, plus the dynamic engine
and transmission mounts, which soften to isolate the occupants
from vibration or firm up to minimize powertrain movement.
But even in the base GT, it doesn’t feel so much like there’s a
torque curve as just a godawful amount of grunt everywhere. A
503-hp GT S coupe in our hands hit 60 mph in three seconds flat;
figure on the C roadster matching that time and the GT needing
an extra couple tenths of a second. In many modern supercars, the
process of engaging launch control is as simple as pressing “up, up,
down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start.” The base car still
makes drivers jump all the hurdles, but if the C is in any driving
mode more intense than comfort, simply follow the standard
brake-torque protocol and the computer will read your intentions.
The soundtrack is pure menace, but while the pops and spits on
098 . CAR AND DRIVER . JUL/2017