- Available for £73,000
- Powerrrrrr – 630hp S was the most powerful Benz you could get
- Luxury, exclusivity, speed and handling for you and three others
- Engine issues can be expensive to work on
- Not exactly cheap, but what do you expect?
- Arguably the best sporting saloon
If Darth Vader was shopping for a motor, what do you suppose he might go for? Our bet is that it would be the subject of this week’s buying guide, the Mercedes-Benz AMG 4.0 GT 63 S, ideally in Obsidian Black. Not only would it have the properly sinister Vader image and correctly stellar performance, but as a four-door saloon it would also have enough room for the armless Skywalker to be penned into the middle of the back seat by two henchmen, leaving the front seat free for any travel snacks and drinks (with a straw of course) that Mr Vader might fancy en route to his next bout of galactic mayhem.
The four-door AMG GT 63 was Mercedes’ alternative to the Porsche Panamera and the BMW 8 Series Gran Coupe. Its chassis was the MRA platform that was already in use with the E-Class and CLS. Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S Four-Door Coupe might have been a big name for a car, but then again it was actually a big car, not just dimensionally (over five metres long and nearly 1.9 metres across, making it bigger in both directions than the Panamera, and taller too) but also in its character. That was mainly down to the engine lurking behind that giant piranha grille. The ’63’ badge didn’t point you to a naturally aspirated 6.3-litre V8 any more but to a twin-turbo 4.0-litre V8 that luckily did a damn fine impression of the original monster motor, lobbing out gratifyingly gut-busting amounts of power and torque to the accompaniment of a planet-crumbling bass throb.
AMG didn’t put a 155mph electronic limiter on the GT 63 S. That would have been ludicrous. Instead, and to their credit, they gloried in the near-200mph performance, celebrating it with the provision of a Drift Mode. Air suspension was standard, as was 4Matic+ all-wheel drive, a nine-speed MCT automatic gearbox and AMG Ride Control+ adaptive suspension.
The GT 63 was always going to be a heavy beast with all the strengthening steels that M-B put into it, but the use of aluminium for the bonnet and front wings and of carbon fibre for the rear bulkhead and boot floor did help to keep the kerb weight down (sic) to just over 2.1 tonnes. That figure would have been seen as outrageous not so long ago but of course nowadays it’s not, having been normalised by electric vehicles.
The only folk who might have cried a tear or two when the car was announced at the 2018 Geneva show for first deliveries in spring 2019 would have been Brabus. It has made a healthy living from building autobahn-crushing versions of top-spec Mercs, but the GT 63 S made a visit to the tuner all but redundant.
At the launch in 2019 there was an Edition 1 version of the GT 63 S with prices starting from £148,950. That bought you Graphite Grey magno paint, 21-inch cross-spoke forged wheels with black inserts, high-gloss black rear wing, carbon matte trim, Nappa leather Magma grey seats with yellow contrast stitching, black Dinamica headlining, and the AMG Night package which was actually about black trim accents everywhere rather than something more exciting.
The Edition 1 also had the Premium Plus package featuring ‘multicontour’ massage/ventilation seats, head-up display, soft door close, multibeam LED headlights, adaptive high beam assist, Air Balance air purification and fragrance system, automatic traffic sign recognition, and ‘Energizing Comfort’ which networked the climate control, music, seat heating, massage, ambient lighting and air fragrances into six ten-minute programmes called Freshness, Warmth, Vitality, Joy, Comfort and er Training, which would be a tumbleweed programme for those who preferred to lounge rather than lunge. The Premium Plus package could be bought separately for £3,600.
The stock GT 63 S’s opening price of just over £135,000 in 2019 seemed a lot at the time but it doesn’t seem so much now, considering how much car you were getting then, considering the £150k-plus starting price of a GT 63 S now in 2024, and considering the fact that you won’t be able to get anything like it from now on.
Today, you’ll still need more than £70k for a five-year-old GT 63 S. Could this already gentle depreciation curve ease even further, or flatten out altogether? Would now be the time to get into one? And if it is, how will the ownership experience pan out? It’s time to stop asking questions and start answering a few.
SPECIFICATION | Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S Four-Door Coupe (2019-23)
Engine: 3,982cc turbocharged V8 32v petrol
Transmission: 9-speed torque converter auto, 4Matic+ all-wheel drive
Power (hp): 630@5,500-6,500rpm
Torque (lb ft): 664@2,500-4,500rpm
0-62mph (secs): 3.2
Top speed (mph): 196
Weight (kg): 2,120
MPG (official combined): 25
CO2 (g/km): 256
Wheels (in): 9.5 x 20 (f), 11 x 20 (r)
Tyres: 265/40 (f), 295/35 (r)
On sale: 2019 - 2023
Price new: £135,550
Price now: from £73,000
Note for reference: car weight and power data is hard to pin down with absolute certainty. For consistency, we use the same source for all our guides. We hope the data we use is right more often than it’s wrong. Our advice is to treat it as relative rather than definitive.
ENGINE & GEARBOX
In S spec the GT 63’s M177 4.0 V8 was generating 630hp and, more relevantly for the provision of utterly dominant but at the same time relaxed thrust, 664lb ft of torque from 2,500rpm. The majority of that torque hit was available from little more than tickover. It was the most powerful AMG on sale when it came out, beaten to the all-time trophy only by the old SL65 Black Series.
Even with 2.1 tonnes to push the result was a serious set of acceleration numbers not just for a four-door saloon but for any car. The official 0-62mph time was 3.2 seconds compared to the non-S’s 3.4sec. One well-known German car mag did it in 3.0 seconds, backing that up with a 0-100mph time of 6.6 seconds and a 0-124mph of 10.2 seconds. That is moving.
Against such a weight of performance you’d be perfectly entitled to expect a combined fuel consumption figure of well under 20mpg, but the official number was actually 25.0mpg, with nearly 32mpg quoted for extra-urban use. That’s freakishly good and a testament to the excellence of the M177, an engine that sounded as well as it went.
They’re not perfect though, and when problems do arise they can be a swine to sort out because of the motor’s design and the tightness of its fit in the engine bay. Dealers will often drop the engine in order to get at broken parts that more often than not require the removal of many other parts. Thermostats are at the top of the list of breakable parts. Oil separators are another known weakness. Failure there leads to excess crankcase pressure, valve cover oil leaks and in the worst-case scenario a blown rear main seal. If oil collects in the spark plug recesses the valve covers will require re-sealing.
None of the jobs listed in that paragraph are quick or cheap. One US M177 owner said that he was quoted over £10,000 to replace an RMS that had gone bad at 45,000 miles. That quote included an associated PCV component that had also failed. Another US M177 owner said that the M-B dealer replaced his engine twice under warranty at a reported price of £63,000 per engine. Labour costs were on top of that.
Some M177s have proved difficult to restart when hot and there have been recalls to fix dodgy fuel pumps. Spark plugs take a beating on high-boost versions of the M177 like the GT 63 S and overboost errors can pop up if you’re driving at the top end of the speed envelope. Injectors have been known to go, and when they do that can destroy the catalytic converters. Intake manifolds can crack, especially on tuned engines. Timing chains can be noisy at idle and engine mounts won’t last forever with so much energy pulsing through them.
The exhaust note on the non-S was relatively discreet but the sound from the S pipe in sporty modes was pure filth, not just when it was under the cosh but also at idle. We’re not sure why AMG felt the need to ‘enhance’ the noise with a cabin sound booster. Some cars have had problems with failed or broken exhaust flap actuators. Exhaust clamps could be a weak spot too.
The AMG Speedshift MCT (Multi Clutch Technology) 9G gearbox was basically the 9G-Tronic but instead of a heavy torque converter they gave it a wet startup clutch to get the car off the mark. The box was capable of fast multiple downshifts and there was Race Start (launch control) as well as four drive modes but the wet clutch did bring a degree of jerkiness to stop-start traffic when the clutch would constantly be going in and out. Dealers couldn’t do much to help fretting owners because that was just how it worked.
Unfortunately you have to give Mercedes-Benz UK a car’s VIN number in order to get an online idea on how much servicing it in their network might cost. In fairness none of the independent specialists were brave enough to put their charges online either. Presumably this lack of transparency is designed to not frighten people, but it’s an approach that runs the risk of frightening potential buyers away from the brand completely by denying them the opportunity to find out about running costs.
CHASSIS
Six driving modes – Slippery, Comfort, Sport, Sport+ Individual and Race – teamed up with four handling programmes – Basic, Advanced, Pro and Master, offering less ESP intervention as you moved up through the list – to let you tailor your GT 63 to just about any situation. Master, which was only accessible through Race mode, revealed an underlying chassis neutrality.
The 4Matic all-wheel drive system’s default set-up was to pour all the power through the back tyres, diverting any overs (up to 50 per cent) to the fronts when things got too lairy. The GT 63 S had a Dynamic Plus package, adding an electronic rear-axle diff lock which sent power to an individual outside wheel. The S also had a Drift Mode. As you’d expect, the front end was excluded from the drive discussion altogether when you were in Drift Mode.
The S’s 20-inch wheels were multispokers as opposed to the non-S’s 5-double-spokers. The ride quality of the three-chamber air suspension with Ride Control+ wasn’t super-plush, especially if you went up to 21-inch wheels, but on the smooth, properly-laid roads on which most of these GT 63s would be travelling (i.e. not British ones) it was more than good enough. Much more impressive, given the size of the thing, was the sharpness of the turn-in and the general tidiness of the handling at normal to brisk speeds, aided without question by the chassis stiffening and the rear-wheel steering.
The GT’s six-pot brake calipers were painted yellow on the S, whose standard steel discs were larger than the regular GT’s. You could tick an £8,000 box for ceramics but that felt like overegging the pudding on a 5-metre saloon that wouldn’t be spending much time on the track. Or would it? That actually sounds like brilliant fun, especially in Drift Mode. Oo-er missis!
BODYWORK
From a distance you might make the mistake of confusing the GT with a conventional saloon, right up to the point where it blared past you in a cloud of dust and sweetie wrappers.
Then you would see the back end. If there’s such a thing as a threatening rear end the GT 63 S had it. The driver-deployable spoiler on the ordinary non-S blended into the rear hatch panel in a nicely anonymous fashion, and even the additional fixed wing on the S didn’t shout too loudly, giving you a mere 30kg of extra downforce at the not commonly achieved speed of 186mph, but when you put it all together the visual result left other road users in little doubt that they were behind something tasty. That fixed spoiler was adjustable if you had the right tools, which didn’t include the Swiss Army knife you got for Christmas. AMG’s aero package for the S also included a more aggressive front splitter, front and rear air ‘flics’, and a modified rear diffuser with four vertical strakes instead of three.
A regular sunshine roof was standard and there was a £2,000 option of a pano roof. You could access the 456-litre boot space via an internal hatch, which was handy if you’d left the sick bags in there and the driver was hoofing it.
INTERIOR
The normal cabin arrangement was for four individual seats, with a three-seat bench also available. The seats themselves were fine although the tighter AMG suspension meant that your backside had to play a part in cushioning road bumps. If your car didn’t have the £3,600 Premium Plus package, you could select active multicontour front seats with massage and ventilation for £1,200 or so. The consensus was that the multicontours were more comfortable than the also optional AMG Performance buckets, especially if you’d eaten too many pies in your life. Heat came in every GT 63 seat, S or non-S.
£3,695 got you a Rear Luxury Lounge (or High-Class Rear) package with individual foldable rear seats, wireless phone charging, climatised cup holders, tablet pre-installation and a touchscreen for infotainment and climate control. With the folding seats you had over 1,300 litres of cargo space. Without them it was restricted to 456 litres, somewhere between the E-Class saloon and the E-Class Coupe.
Facing the AMG Performance steering wheel (Dinamica microfibre in the S as opposed to Nappa leather in the normal GT 63), the driving position was higher than that of the two-door, two-seat GT but at least that boosted your vision and ease of entry and exit. The 64-colour ambient lighting was lovely, as were the wheel-mounted selectors and buttons for the drive mode and chassis settings and the titchy animated buttons on the centre console for start/stop, rear wing and such. A Supersport mode for the digital dials gave you a big central tachometer with a shift light if you were changing gears manually.
The usual trouble with any coupe is a shortage of rear headroom. Six-footers would be OK with the leg and shoulder room but they would feel vertically cramped. It’s the price you, or they anyway, paid for style. All GTs were lavishly fitted out with fine leathers, woods and carbon fibres. Burmester surround sound, a 360-degree parking camera and wireless charging were standard. The GT didn’t have Benz’s latest MBUX infotainment system so there was no virtual reality navigation or ‘hey Mercedes’ virtual assistantry, but COMAND with the side-by-side 12.3-inch displays was more than adequate for most.
PH VERDICT
The GT 63 S was the thoughtful choice when it was new, rivals like the Porsche Panamera Turbo, BMW M8 Comp Gran Coupe and (by a considerable margin) the Audi RS7 all being significantly cheaper, but when you’re operating in that price bracket you may well take the view that there’s little point in accepting second-best just to save money. We wouldn’t disagree there and on that basis the AMG was worth the extra. The Merc is still expensive as a used choice but the cash gaps between it and the others are narrower, which we reckon widens the desirability gap still further in the Benz’s favour.
The GT 63 wasn’t perfect. You could understand the weight-reduction reasons behind M-B’s decision to fit the wet startoff clutch to the nine-speed auto box, but it did compromise the car’s smoothness in traffic. Still, if you could put up with that foible and the slightly nibbly ride on bad roads (an E63 was worse), it was all gravy. Not only was the GT 63 stupidly fast in all weathers thanks to the all-wheel drive, but every journey was memorable too thanks to the engine. A few red-blooded PHers will have shed a tear at the loss of Merc’s booming 6.3 V8 but there’s so much solace to be found in the 4.0 M177, especially when it’s shouting through such a wonderfully dirty-sounding 63 S exhaust.
It’s true that some pretty meaty bills have been generated by the engine, or more accurately by the ancillary items that are bolted to it, but those owners who have had fault-free experiences (the overwhelming majority) have been fulsome in their praise. ‘The best car I have owned,’ said one. ‘Outstanding design, performance, handling and reliability,’ said another, ‘a blast to drive that turns heads everywhere I go.’ ‘Exceeded all expectations.’ ‘This awesome do-everything car is expensive but worth it.’ That sort of stuff.
At the time of writing in March 2024, there were seven GT 63s on PH Classifieds. All of them were 630hp S cars apart from one 831hp/1,033lb ft S E Performance plug-in hybrid that gives you a 2.9-second 0-62mph time for nearly £160k. Fortunately the full rolling thunder GT 63 S experience was available for considerably less than half that amount.
Here’s the cheapest one on the PH stocks, a 2019 Edition 1 in stealthy Designo Graphite Grey Magno with black leather. With just under 54,000 miles on the clock and a recent service it was going for £72,990, which in fact made it the lowest-priced GT 63 S on sale in the UK as we went to press. For exactly £7k more than that you could be in this Premium Plus car with 21-inch wheels and the correctly bowel-loosening Vader paint. Having only done a couple of thousand miles since its most recent MOT in July ‘23 it was standing at 31,000 miles in March.
If you wanted to you could pay nearly £125k for a 2019 car with 7,000 miles on it, albeit one with a stage 2 tune (bet that’s lively) but you could save over £25k on that by opting for this 2019 13,000-mile Premium Plus car with the Rear Luxury Lounge at £99,000.
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