The Mercedes-AMG GT sedan has already proven to be a strong performer in the luxury performance sedan market. It has the power, luxury, and style to help it stand out amongst rivals from Porsche, Audi, and BMW. A replacement was in the works, but the company made the public wait nearly a year with the firm unleashing a long and very elaborate teaser campaign.

At long last, the teases end and Mercedes has now chosen to formally unveil the second-generation GT sedan as it not only launches the moniker into the EV era, but also makes a performance statement that should catch Porsche’s attention.

GT’s face is one only a mother could love

Before we dive into some of the juicy bits that lurk under its skin, we might as well address the prominent white elephant in the room, the front end. The second-generation GT gets a new front end design and the headlights now get “badge-shaped” lighting elements that are connected by a long lightbar with the illuminated grille panel projecting a bold aggressive motif. How well it meshes this newfound boldness with the company’s design language will depend on who you ask but at least the car will get noticed.

Things improve slightly when you get to the back. The three-pointed star is once again used as a design element in the lighting but this time, the tailights are rounded with a narrow LED light strip running along the upper portion of the lighting. Gloss black trim is also used and it helps add some contrast to the proceedings. Look for certain colors to work better with the styling with the wild greenish-yellow hue Mercedes used in its hero car perhaps not being one of them.

Triple the motors for even more performance

After you take a moment to digest the GT’s exterior styling, you’ll be rewarded with the potent amount of performance that will be on hand. The “base” GT55 model gets three electric motors that produce a combined system output of 503 hp and 1,328 lb-ft of torque. A special drive mode can temporarily boost power to 805 with the torque rating continuing to be unchanged. All-wheel drive is standard and the car also comes with a 106-kWh nickel-coblat-maganese aluminum battery pack. The company didn’t release EPA figures, but says this variant can go up to 434 miles on a single charge when measured on the WTLP scale.

Meanwhile, the uplevel GT63 gets a boost with these models making 711 hp in default driving and 1,475 lb-ft of torque. If needed, the setup can also make 1,153 hp but only in short bursts. Both vehicles can go up to 186 mph when equipped with the AMG Performance package, and can also make the sprint to 60 mph in under three seconds with the GT55 doing it in 2.3 seconds while the GT63 does the same feat in a slightly faster 2.2 seconds. That top speed figure is more than what you get in the Porsche Taycan Turbo and the soon to be discontinued Tesla Model S Plaid.

These absurd performance figures are thanks to some very advanced technology with the GT getting new electric motors that feature axial flux technology. This allows the motors to run parallel to the rotation versus perpendicular like you see in conventional radial-flux motors. The switch to axial flux motors allowed the company to make them smaller and lighter with the front motor only being 3.5 inches wide while the rear motors are 3.2 inches wide.

The battery also gets upgraded and the tall narrow cylindrical cells benefit from a reduced heat sink and quicker heat dissapation. This allows them to have better performance with the cells also resting in an aluminum housing that has less heat retention than steel housings. of course, it wouldn’t be a Mercedes product without some form of electronic engineering and here in the GT each cell gets its own direct cooling circuit to help it quickly adapt to charging and other various driving conditions.

Functional luxury

With the performance hardware feeling like your science teacher designed it, the interior of the GT was clearly designed by the art teacher with the cabin being a balanced mixture of function and luxury. The 10.2-inch digital instrument cluser and the 14.0-inch infotainment screen are united in one bezeled surface that’s angled towards the driver. The passenger is not left out either, and they will also get a 14.0-inch screen to use, a trend that we have seen lately with many production vehicles.

The dash design also shares some of its inspiration with Mercedes’s other EVs including the air vent design. Move into the GT63 and you’ll see three rotary dials emerge out of the lower center console by the cupholders. These three dials control what Mercedes-AMG calls the “AMG Race Engineer Unit” with the dials allowing the driver to tailor various aspects of the car to their needs as well as the needs of whatever driving situation they encounter. In addition to the traction control, the setup also allows you to adjust the suspension and even the response from the accelerator. The car also gets the company’s “Skycontrol” illuminated glass with the AMGs getting a special theme that features a pair of illuminated Affalterbach crests over the front seats.

When can I buy one?

If all of this performance sounds very enticing to you, you will have to endure a bit of a wait. Mercedes has not released pricing for the 2026 GT 4-Door yet but look for both versions to have pricing that would be noticeably higher than the outgoing hybrid equipped models. Those versions of the GT start at just over $200,000 so seeing a price tag of just over $220,000 would not surprise us. It would allow the Benz to be firmly in the mix with the Taycan Turbo and the Lucid Air Sapphire.

The one challenge the GT 4-Door will face is its exterior styling. Many luxury car buyers are style conscious and it will be interesting to see if the controversial front end will scare some of these buyers off or if they are willing to sacrifice aesthetics for pure performance. Only time will tell on that front…