Tech Tuesday: Mercedes AMG GT and GTS in South Africa

Each time I have to go on a trip, packing is my biggest fear. What items should I take? Will it get cold? Is eleven pairs of underwear enough? All these questions run through my head and after I have figured it all out, I then ask myself, how is all this going to fit in my suitcase? I don’t like to lug around a big bag when going on a trip, I’m only 5 foot 7 so I look ridiculous if I carry a whale of a suitcase. At the risk of sounding redundant, I’ll let you in on my secret of how I manage to fit a lot of clothing in a small suitcase. My mother. Yes I said it, as a grown man my mother still advises me on how to pack my suitcase in the most effective way. This is how she does it, she removes non essentials and then systematically arranges the pants and shirts and then places the toiletries in the middle of it all and voila, I’m set.

I’m not the only who uses their mothers experience to assist them in important tasks. Mercedes’s tuning mother had to do the same for the development of the new AMG GT and GTS which is being launched in South Africa today. Mercedes had a similar problem to me, it needed to fit 4.0 litres of an engine and two turbochargers in quite a small body and still create 375kW and 650Nm of torque in the GTS and 350kW and 600Nm of torque in the GT. So Mommy AMG advised them to fit the turbochargers in the V section of the 8 cylinders in order to save weight and increase throttle response, she calls this the “Hot V setup”, an effective way of packaging the engine. She then further advised them to use a dry sump setup in order to lower the centre of gravity of the car and therefore better the handling. She also got rid of non essentials to save weight but still kept important creature comforts, but used an aluminium body to house all these items. As a result you get a 3,8 second 0- 100Kph time for the GTS and a 4,0 second time of the GT. Not bad Mommy, not bad.

The AMG GT and GTS are very pretty cars indeed, the cars are the replacement for the SLS AMG, so gone are the gull-wing doors and the normally aspirated V8. The sacrifice of fancy doors is a small one compared to the new technologies introduced by “Mommy” in the new AMG GT and GTS. Tis an interesting time to be in the Porsche 911 market, because Mercedes’s little monster is a very appealing package indeed, at the right price as well. The GT will start at around R1.7M and the GTS at around R2M. Let’s see what happens between these two rivals in the very near future, it could be a case of the old “my Mom is stronger than you’re Mom” debate.