2021 Mercedes AMG GT Black Series First Drive Review | The Most Absurd AMG Ever

Today we'll be doing a quick drive of what I think is the fastest, most outlandish and craziest supercar that Mercedes has ever produced to date. This is the 2021 Mercedes AMG GT Black. So what we have here is something that I didn't think we would ever see on the channel because, you know, we get our fair share of Huracan 720 and 20s McLarens, Porsches and whatnot. But this car here, this car is simply on a whole nother level. Sure, I could see how if you're a non assuming pedestrian just strolling by on the street, you could easily mistake this for a base 120k AMG GT. But then you would also have to be blind. And rumor has it is that if you walked into a dealership right now and you offered them $100,000 over the base $330,000 sticker price, they would still laugh you all the way out the door. That's because historically, every AMG Black series car has become somewhat of a collector's item. A special trim, sort of like Ferrari Speciale or scuderia, maybe Lambo's SVJ. And it's even more rare than a Porsche GT2 RS. But with this year's craziness, we're seeing these cars go for upwards of a half million bucks. Anyway, there's a lot going on here on the outside, and the first thing my wife said to me when we saw the car is that it actually reminded us a lot of the Viper ACR Extreme we recently reviewed. The Magma Beam Orange is quite similar to the T8 Orange Viper that we tested too. It sports new fender louvers, massive hood vents to release all that engine heat, wider bodywork than an AMG gtr, as well as a manually adjustable front splitter and a massive electronically adjustable dual element rear wing. And out back, they move the exhaust pipes to the outside like the original AMG GTs, but it's four round tips instead of two big square ones. All in all, this thing is 130 pounds lighter than the run of the mill AMG GT coupe and 70 pounds lighter than the Track Focus GTR. So basically, it still weighs a tad over 3,600 pounds regardless. Not only is it considered the lightest AMG GT ever, but it's also the most powerful. That's because under the hood is the new Mercedes M178 LS2, which kind of sounds like a C6 Corvette and a C63AMG had a stepchild, but I assure you, you couldn't be further from the truth because this here is a mythical 4 liter twin turbo flat plane crank V8 that makes 720 brake horsepower in just a hair under 600 pounds of torque. With all that said, they claim to do a sub 3/2 060 and a low 10/2 quarter mile time as well as being one of the fastest production cars around the Nurburgring right now. The interior hasn't changed much from a normal AMG GT R. It's still covered in alcantara from head to toe, and my favorite little traction dial is still there to help you fine tune wheel spin. If you aren't familiar with the AMG GT series, the center console here has all your pertinent drive mode and exhaust toggles. But the cool thing with these newer model years is that they started throwing digital dials on the steering wheel too. And frankly that's pretty neat. A little Ferrari esque, but I'm more of an old fashioned kind of guy where I like, you know, physical switches. Fun fact though, in the US you can't get the full Euro spec titanium roll cage. Instead you get this tiny little carbon fiber roll bar that I guess allows you to actually use your rear view mirror. But yeah, I think it's time we get to the driving. So let's see what she actually sounds like. Pardon the granny revs. I wasn't sure how hard I could push. Everyone always talks about how, you know, they're disappointed with that exhaust note out back and honestly it isn't that bad. I mean yes, from outside of the car it's kind of a letdown, but a lot of it from the inside it sounds really. Oh. It sounds good. But you know what, it's actually all piped in a lot of that kind of like raw sounding, you know, engine note is fake. It's kind of like how BMW does it. But you know what, it's okay. I am a little disappointed to be honest though after hearing the C8 0 6's flat plane crank V8 in all those spy videos, it's hard not to be. The symphony outside of the AMG is just so muted that you can actually hear the wastegates doing their thing. But this car is honestly all about the driver. Like the AMG gtr, the driving position is very focused and like any long hood line, front engine sports car with rear wheel drive, it feels very familiar to me. When you go to change the drive modes, this thing changes over from a fire breathing track monster to a C class going to the grocery store. You would never actually want to daily drive this black series, but frankly you could if you were Bruce Wayne. And as you probably noticed, there's a lot of road presence. It measures 81.7 inches wide with the mirrors and in case you're wondering, that is indeed wider than an Aventador. Coupled that with the super sexy Pan America grille and crazy arrow, it's hard not to see this thing coming up on you in the rear view. The gear shifts in the seven speed dual clutch gearbox are amazing as well. Up and down are both very satisfying. There's a tremendous amount of low end torque in this car, and like a McLaren, the speed becomes somewhat effortless as you lay into the throttle. It's virtually impossible not to break any speed limits in here. Like I said, the car gets pretty hot even with just pushing it on the street. But I guess that means these vents are doing their job right? So because the car was still within its thousand mile break in period, we took it somewhat easy and didn't do any performance testing. What I will tell you though is that right off the bat it doesn't feel nearly as fast as a 720s even though they have similar amounts of power. Of course I could be wrong because I'm just going off my butt dyno, but I would still put my money on a 720 as being the faster car simply because the curb weight is a few hundred pounds lighter. That's only in a straight line though. If you put these two around a track, I'm willing to bet that hands down the black Sears would eat the McLaren on the street. The car got a lot of compliments too, but I think that's mainly because of the color. And like I mentioned in the beginning, even a casual car enthusiast may not be able to tell the difference between something like this and a, you know, AMG gtr. At the end of the day, I'm just really grateful to have been able to spend some time with such a beautiful machine. And special thanks to the owner, who will remain somewhat anonymous here for making my first traveling episode pretty special for me and my family. Anyway, hope you all enjoyed this episode. As always. I'll catch you all on the next one. 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