2025 Mercedes-AMG GT63 S E Performance Welcomes Maniacs And Nerds Who Love To Fiddle

The 2025 Mercedes-AMG GT63 S E Performance coupe is a freight train. The sheer power of its twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V8 and rear-mounted electric motor is enough to tow a small building, change the direction the Earth spins and get her to call you back. A car like this gives you access to power 17th-century kings could only dream of, yet it's so modern and tech-forward that you need to be a massive nerd to get the most out of it.

This is a car for the type of person who sees a Formula 1 driver tinkering with the various buttons and switches on their steering wheel and thinks, "Yeah, I want to do that too." There are endless permutations and combinations and options to choose from behind the wheel of the GT63 S E Performance. You can tailor it to be exactly what you want it to be, whether that be a supercar that rules the road with the tyrannical malice of King Henry VIII, or a quiet luxury coupe that blasts down the highway in near silence (it is a plug-in hybrid, after all) as you think about how much better you are at picking cars than everybody else.

In many ways, this car is the pinnacle of AMG right now, and it should be treated as such.

Full Disclosure: Mercedes-AMG was kind enough to lend me a fully fueled and charged GT63 S E Performance to do with as I pleased for a week.

At the heart of the AMG GT63 S E Performance's madness is its drivetrain. It starts with the same twin-turbo M177 4.0-liter V8 found in other V8 AMG GTs (and every other V8-powered Mercedes). On its own, it makes plenty of power — 603 horsepower, to be exact — but that's not nearly enough for the lunatics in AMG's engineering department. So they decided to throw a rear-mounted 201-hp electric motor with its own two-speed transmission and a 5-kWh battery into the mix. When you combine all of these things, you get some gargantuan numbers: 805 hp and 1,047 pound-feet of torque.

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This unending power gets sent to all four corners via Mercedes' very confusing and very German MCT multiclutch transmission. It's not a traditional dual clutch, but it also doesn't have a torque converter, instead using a start-off wet clutch. My brain hurts just thinking about it. In any case, it does a hell of a job at launching the nearly 4,800-pound coupe. 0-60 mph takes just 2.4 seconds, according to Car and Driver's instrumented testing, and while I didn't pull out my own VBOX, I'd say that sounds about right. If you keep your foot in it, the quarter-mile will be dispatched in just 10.4 seconds at 135 mph per C/D, as you are well on your way to the electronically limited 199-mph top speed. Yowza.

The performance is all well and good, but a real party trick of the AMG GT63 S E Performance is the fact you can get some all-electric driving range out of it. Granted, it won't be much — this system is definitely meant more for performance than being green — but you can still travel about 11 miles (if you take it easy) on electric alone, per the EPA. Then, you can either plug it into a charger or just do some aggressive driving, and the car will charge itself up in no time. I suggest the latter. It's the same setup used by the SL roadster, S63 sedan and GT four-door coupe E Performance models.

All of this power means the GT63 S E Performance is a monster on the road. It can produce the sort of speed that makes even the longest straights disappear in the blink of an eye, as the intake noise from the big V8 stifles any chance you have of hearing the kick-ass Burmester sound system. While this car is admittedly not as nimble as the far-lighter nonhybrid AMG GT63 Pro I drove in Germany (and nearly v-maxxed on the Autobahn), it's still no slouch in the corners thanks in part to the car's active roll control and rear-axle steering system, which also made in-town maneuverability that much easier.

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Sure, this thing has all-wheel-drive, but in corners, I could definitely feel the rear bias in the powertrain that was aided by the electric motor and the fact it's actually a bit heavier out back than it is up front. All of this means, in the traditional AMG way, that the car is quite tail happy. Unfortunately it can feel a bit wayward, especially if you don't tune and calibrate the 10,000,000 individual settings correctly. I could also feel the car having some trouble blending the traditional 16.5-inch front carbon ceramic brakes and regen braking system, especially during more spirited driving. It takes a lot to slow down a car as heavy as this, and while I never really lost confidence in the system, it did make me go "huh" a few times.

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Luckily, there's enough grip from the 21-inch Michelin Pilot Sport S 5 summer tires that getting into trouble is very hard. Once I was out of a corner, I could just rocket onto the next one, and because the electric motor has that trick two-speed gearbox, the extra power never dies out. It's a tidal wave of fury, this thing.

At its heart, the AMG GT63 S E Performance is a GT car, and it does that oh so well. I loaded up the car with my partner, our three cats and a weekend's worth of luggage for a small trip, and it handled the job with ease. Between its brilliant adaptive dampers, relatively quiet cabin and nearly decent fuel economy, the big coupe made for a wonderful roadtrip companion. The only thing that let it down a bit was the fact that the battery and the rest of its electronic gubbins took up some very valuable space in the trunk, dropping the usable space from 11 cubic feet to a slightly awkwardly shaped 7 cubic feet. Thanks to the liftback design, there's still plenty of room to cram things into, though.

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Other than that, the interior of the GT63 S E Performance is pretty much your standard Mercedes-Benz fare — that is to say, it's very, very good. The tech, if you didn't already guess, is sort of a nerd's paradise. The gauge cluster is a 12.3-inch screen that lets me display whatever pertinent information I could think of clearly and concisely, and in the middle is an 11.9-inch vertical touchscreen. MBUX may very well be the best infotainment system in the business. With these screens, a handful of capacitive touch buttons on the steering wheel and a set of drivetrain control buttons placed on the wheel below the 3- and 9-o'clock spokes, I was able to change just about everything having to do with the car's driving behavior and personality.

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Using these controls, there are multiple levels of settings for the car's overall drive mode, its engine calibration, its suspension stiffness, its traction control level, its stability control, how aggressive the gearbox is, how loud the exhaust is, the front-axle lift system, the regenerative braking system, the car's active aero and a myriad of other options that are too mind-bendingly German to list. Basically, this car lets you indulge in the most aggressive ways possible. It might all seem a bit daunting, and it can be, because the entire time I was driving, I always felt like I was one or two settings away from actually having the car set up the way I wanted it to be. But, it also gives a ton of flexibility. There's a lot built in from the get-go, so it means this car feels at home on a highway blast, driving around town or terrorizing a backroad. It's really something.

If you don't count the Mercedes-AMG One because it's a super-exclusive F1-derived hypercar that isn't even road legal in the U.S., the AMG GT63 S E Performance is the pinnacle of AMG, and to no one's surprise, the Germans have priced it as such. To start, the car will set you back $203,450, including destination. That's the exact same price as the AMG GT63 Pro, a non-hybrid hardcore version of the car it shares its top-dog crown with. However, adding the electric motor to the normal AMG GT63 Coupe also means you've got to add $20,850 to its price tag. That's a hell of a lot of money, but you're also getting a hell of a lot more power with the E Performance.

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Of course, this is a Mercedes-AMG, so none of them are going to be base models either way. The car I drove had such niceties as those $4,000 21-inch gold forged wheels I mentioned, a $9,750 Manufaktur interior upgrade package, $3,200 AMG performance seats, a wonderful-sounding $4,500 Burmester Surround sound system, a $1,950 driver assistance package, and a few other odds and ends that brought the as-tested price of the car I drove to $232,450.

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I know, I know. That's a lot of money for a car that, in its cheapest four-cylinder GT43 guise, starts at $107,750. That being said, it's actually cheaper than competition like the Porsche 911 Turbo S ($272,650), Aston Martin DB12 ($265,500) and McLaren GTS ($230,000ish to start). So, in a way, the AMG GT63 S E Performance is actually a bargain, and because you're a dork nerd, you're going to love that.

That's why I'm a bit split on this car. I'm not a dork. Just kidding, I clearly am, but I don't necessarily want to have to fiddle with 1,000,000 settings to find the one that is exactly right for every driving scenario. It had me acting like Goldilocks, looking for the perfect place to be, rather than just settling into something, and that is distracting.

I don't mean it's distracting from the literal task of driving. I mean, it's distracting when you're trying to enjoy the drive, and if you bought the pinnacle of AMG cars, it's a safe bet that you wanted to enjoy your drive. Granted, some folks might love the idea of having to set up their car for each individual task. There are people out there who love to fiddle and love an aggressive-ass car. I'm just not one of them.

For them, the Mercedes-AMG GT63 S E Performance is the perfect car that'll let them scratch the itch an F1 steering wheel simulator never will, but for me, it just kept me wondering if I made the right choice — and that isn't what I want to be thinking about while being shoved toward the horizon by 1,047 lb-ft of torque.