Mercedes-AMG Built The GT 4-Door Coupe To Take On The Porsche Panamera

To some, the Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupe is a confusing vehicle. It’s a four-door (or, more accurately, five-door) liftback that’s (supposedly) based on of a two-door supercar, which could baffle some, especially as the brand already has the new CLS covering the four-door coupe segment.

But, according to Mercedes, the GT 4-Door Coupe is so much more than a tuned CLS. Speaking with Road & Track at the New York Auto Show, Mercedes-AMG boss Tobias Moers shed some light on why AMG spent the time and money on developing the GT 4-Door Coupe.

“We saw that if C63 and E63 customers were looking for the next level, we didn’t have a great offering,” Moers said. “For most of them, a CLS was not the right approach, so we lost some people to other brands.”

Watch: Has the 2018 CLS AMG has gone all soft on us with its 453 HP hybridized engine?

While Moers didn’t come right out and say it, the most obvious rival is also based in Stuttgart. If you get into an E63 S and think that you need a luxury sedan with even more performance, there’s really only one car that you can go with: the Porsche Panamera. Sure, the E63 S is quicker in a straight line than the Panamera Turbo, but when it comes to driving dynamics, there’s a big difference – plus, the Porsche is available in the even more powerful (and expensive) 670HP Turbo S-E Hybrid.

It’s easy to write the GT Four-Door oupe off as being just another sedan with a potent AMG engine, yet that’s not the case. Yes, it does use Mercedes’ modular sedan platform that’s similar to the E63 and the CLS, but other than that, it doesn’t share a lot of parts with other sedans in the brand’s lineup.

“It’s not just a modified CLS,” said Moers. “There’s an understanding at AMG of how to engineer, how a car feels, how a car should drive – this was done with that car.”

With its 630-hp 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8, which is the most powerful AMG engine right now, new front and rear subframes and rear-axle steering, you can see where Moers is coming from. And all of those changes make it sound like the GT 4-Door Coupe could very well be the ideal super sedan. Moers, for one, believes that “it’s not far away.”

Well, we can hardly wait for the comparison test with the Panamera now, can we?