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Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series confirmed for 2020

The boss of Mercedes-AMG GmbH Tobias Moers has confirmed the somewhat open secret that his company is working on a coveted GT Black Series for 2020.


This most hardcore of Mercedes-AMG GT coupes will sit above the $350k AMG GT R and become the absolute pinnacle of the company’s Porsche 911 rivalling sports car range.

“There is a GT variant still left… We are on the journey, we started the journey for Black Series,” Moers dropped to us today, adding later that 2020 would be an "interesting year" for the Affalterbach brand.

Pictured: Mercedes-AMG GT R

That’s code for 2020 being the year it’s launched, and what a fitting swan-song it’ll make for the first generation AMG GT.

The current GT flagship, the AMG GT R, has a twin-turbo 4.0 V8 making 430kW and 700Nm, but the Black Series will obviously supplant this.

Moers happily told us today that “there’s still room for more” in the GT’s V8, codenamed M178.

For reference, the top-of-the-range 63 S version of the Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door revealed today has a version of the same engine making an astonishing 470kW and 900Nm.

However, that car has a 4Matic+ fully variable AWD system, whereas the Mercedes-AMG GT two-door Black Series will be RWD like the rest of the coupe family. As such it may be dialled back a notch.

We’d guess at a figure sitting around 450kW and 800Nm, though Moers did cryptically say that “the next Black Series done from the GT must be something really surprising”.

The Mercedes-AMG GT R does the 0-100km/h dash in 3.6 seconds, so the Black Series will surely dip a few tenths below this, albeit not in the rarefied air of the Porsche 911 GT2 RS.

The GT 4-Door 63 S 4Matic+ does the dash in 3.2s despite weighing almost 2.1t, keep in mind.

On the topic of weight, the Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series will obviously lose a few kilos as part fo the company’s mission to hone it to its absolute practicable limits.

As we wrote late last year, DTM legend Bernd Schneider agreed the GT platform could accept more power and performance. But can the current 7 DCT gearbox accept another bump in power and torque, though?

“The DCT in the GT R can’t handle that much more power anymore, but we will find some way,” Moers said at the time of our previous interview.

Will it live up the the legacy of the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Black Series? We shall see. Read the review of that car here.

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