Drive gets behind the wheel of the GT Black Series, the fastest road-going machine Mercedes-AMG has ever built, and the car that money can’t buy.
- Race car looks, power and performance
- Active aero makes it super sticky in corners
- Buy one and they give you soft- and hard-compound tyres
- Only the lucky few can afford one
- No ISOFIX points
- Can’t tow a horse float
Drive.com.au is one of just a handful of media outlets to drive – in Australia – the car that money can’t buy. And I’m struggling to remember any of it.
Only 28 Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series super coupes are coming to Australia and all of them have been sold. Mercedes-AMG has held one back from its new owner – paid in full, by the way – so I can experience the new pinnacle of its road car range.
I’ve just driven five laps in the GT Black Series at full speed with instructor Sam Brabham helping me extract every ounce of performance from it and myself. The experience was so far beyond anything I’ve done before, so intense and so overwhelming that it took everything I had just to get through it.
And now, sitting upstairs in pitlane, it appears that I forgot to press record on my internal memory bank.
Race drivers have always amazed me, not just for their incredible ability to take cars to the limit corner after corner, lap after lap. But also their ability to recall that experience, corner by corner, lap by lap, later on when debriefing with race engineers or being interviewed on TV.
For me, the experience of driving the GT Black Series around Phillip Island took me so far out of my comfort zone that it blurred into one heart-thumping, pulse-frying moment. I don’t even remember breathing.
| Key details | 2021 Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series |
| Price (MSRP) | $796,900 plus on-road costs |
| Colour of test car | Magma Beam Orange |
| Options | None |
| Price as tested | $796,900 plus on-road costs |
| Rivals | Gulfstream 650ER | Luxury Yacht | Holiday House in the Bahamas |
Slowly, as the adrenaline rush wears off, memories start coming back.
Like sliding into the Black Series and bonking my helmeted head on the low roof rail, then saying an embarrassed hello to my tutor, motorsport pro Sam Brabham.
I remember doing up the four-point harness that comes standard on the Australian-spec GT Black Series, along with a titanium rollcage and fire-extinguisher, and noticing that the rest of the cabin looks surprisingly similar to the GT R Pro I drove earlier this year. Fixed-back carbon-fibre sports bucket seats, AMG sports steering wheel with drive-mode dials, and a yellow centrally mounted traction-control dial that has nine settings ranging from wet-weather wuss to ‘Ring legend. Perhaps optimistically, Sam dialled up something just north of the middle for me.
I remember the door closing followed by Sam’s instruction to fire up the engine and put the car’s electronic smarts into Sports-plus. Then we engage ‘drive’ on the seven-speed dual-clutch auto and head out of the pits with the soundtrack of the Black Series’s flat-plane V8 growling menacingly in the background.
AMG opted for a flat-plane crank arrangement on this, its most powerful engine, because it maximises performance, albeit at the cost of refinement. It also tempers low-RPM torque and impacts that characterful V8 growl that other AMG GT models with the same engine enjoy. Instead, the Black Series V8 sounds less baritone primal and more stridently mechanical.
That, and other engine modifications like new camshafts and an exhaust manifold suited to the flat-plane crank’s modified firing order. Plus, larger turbocharger compressors and intercoolers feeding more air into the engine, and a new exhaust taking it away. They all not only heighten throttle response, they also raise power by 25 per cent over the GT R to 537kW and torque 14 per cent to 800Nm from 700Nm.
Add to that the heavily modified seven-speed dual-clutch transaxle and carbon-fibre driveshaft, which is 40 per cent lighter than the standard driveshaft, and the result is a car that reacts lustily if a fly so much as lands on the throttle.
The GT Black Series also has a carbon-fibre roof, bonnet, boot, front and rear quarter panels, body skirts and rear wing, all of which lops kilos off and brings the kerb weight down to a claimed 1540kg, 92kg lighter than the GT R Pro. This gives the Black Series a power to weight ratio of 349kW per tonne, well ahead of the GT R Pro’s 263kW/tonne. The roll cage fitted standard to Australian spec Blacks pares that advantage back a smidge.
As we merge with the main straight, I feed the accelerator in and three things happen at once. First, my breathing stops as the Black fires forward like a launched missile. Second, my ears shut down as the engine note goes from menacing to monstrous, drowning Sam’s guidance beneath its thundering yowl. And third, my mind shuts off all ancillary functions as it searches for the bandwidth to help me cope with this unfamiliar and unfathomable reality.
Doohan Corner comes and goes as I focus primarily on restoring cognitive functions, and secondly on brake markers and apex cones. Back in the driver briefing, I was dismissive of these driver aids, but now I’m thankful because the driving line is one less thing I need to concentrate on.
I’m also not bothering with the gearchange paddles, which is good because my ears haven’t adapted to the timbre changes of this ridiculously loud and potent V8 at differing revs. It sounds monstrous pretty much everywhere between 2000rpm and its 7200rpm redline.
Peak power is achieved at 6700–6900rpm, but with peak torque table-topping from 2000–6000rpm, the GT Black Series delivers head-snapping punch all over the rev range. So, when the transmission gets its gearing wrong coming out of Siberia in fifth instead of third, I don’t bother interceding. The transmission does that anyway as it senses our full-throttle approach to the Hayshed, which is for me the second-scariest corner on this track.
There’s something fundamentally life-threatening about flying full noise towards a corner with a very large lake and hayshed right in front of you. Everything in me screams to back off, but Sam’s voice – now shouting across the cabin at me – encourages a partial lift to shift weight forward and get the nose in before driving the Black hard through and out of the corner.
The Black’s uprated and adjustable coil-over suspension combines with its heightened aerodynamics – that massive multi-plane rear wing and extendable front spoiler help it make four times the downforce of the GT R Pro at 250km/h – and super-sticky Michelins to scythe through the corner and hurl us rapidly at the tightening left-hand climb to Lukey Heights.
By the way, every GT Black Series comes with two specially made sets of Michelin tyres, one soft compound and one hard. Of course it does. I’m running the softs today because this is a sprint race, not an enduro.
Then it’s the turn of the Black’s carbon-ceramic brakes to do their thing. In a straight line on a flat track they pull the Black up from 200km/h three car lengths quicker than the GT R Pro. Over the crest at Lukey Heights, they briefly trigger the ABS as the car goes light before gravity returns and the brakes bleed off speed so fast the harness stops my breath.
Then we’re off through MG corner and heading around the seemingly endless left-hander, which is actually two corners that will bring us onto the main straight. This last left-hander is the scariest corner on the track because you tip in and aim for the apex with no exit in sight. Getting a good full-throttle exit onto Gardner Straight is key to a good lap time, so you need to commit early. But tip in too early in a Black and you’ll run out of track on the high side of 230km/h.
| Key details | 2021 Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series |
| Engine | 4.0-litre V8 twin-turbo petrol |
| Power | 537kW @ 6700-6900rpm |
| Torque | 800Nm @ 2000-6000rpm |
| Drive type | Rear-wheel drive |
| Transmission | Seven-speed dual-clutch automatic |
| Power to weight ratio | 330.8kW/t |
| Weight (tare) | 1623kg |
| 0-100km/h | 3.2 seconds |
The straight gives me a chance to regulate my breathing and try to commit some of what I’m experiencing to memory. But the straight comes and goes very quickly when you’re hitting 270km/h and still accelerating hard. Then it’s all I can do to bleed off speed before carving through Doohan Corner and out again heading for the challenging Southern Loop.
It’s here, in the 190-degree Southern Loop, that the GT R Black gave me the most profound demonstration of its prowess. Four of my five flying laps are over and the brave pills are finally kicking in. I’m feeling confident enough to divide my attention between driving and mentally documenting my experience. The racing line, steering and pedal inputs aren’t second nature yet, but they’re no longer totally dominating my primary functions.
Sam’s instructions through Southern Loop on our previous laps were invaluable. He describes a double-apex approach that keeps us straight under brakes on entry before letting the car run wide in the middle, then turning hard at our slowest point to shave another apex on the way out.
This time we carry more speed in than previously and I start to fear that I’ve overcooked it. Sam senses this as we run wider, and he leans over and applies extra lock to the wheel.
Here I was thinking I was on the limits of the Black’s adhesion, pushing tyres and car to the max, and he confidently reefs on a bit more look, tucking us in even tighter.
This casual gesture was damning evidence that my understanding of the limits of automotive physics is clearly inadequate. When my senses are telling me we risk disaster by pushing any harder, the Black Series – and a professional race driver – know that there’s more to be had.
There’s simply no chance of me taking a Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series onto a racetrack for just five laps and coming away with a definitive review of such a phenomenal machine. Cars of this calibre are far beyond a mere mortal’s ability to comprehend and to tame. But then again, if a numpty like me owned this car, my skills would improve over time. But it would be a long time before I outgrew it. If ever.
I would have loved another five laps, but even another 50 would not have been enough for me to heighten my skills sufficiently to reveal the Black Series’s true capabilities.
I could also wish for $800,000 to buy one of these, but they’re all sold out. So that, too, is futile.
If you haven’t got your name against one of these yet and you want one, then you will need to be not only rich, but also patient enough to wait until one of 28 lucky Australians puts theirs on the second-hand market. Even then it’s a fair bet you’ll need more than the original $800,000, and not just because this GT Black Series will appreciate in value.
This will be the last purely petrol-powered AMG supercar, and that will make it even more of a collector’s item in the electrically powered years ahead.
The closest you will get now is the AMG GT R Pro that was, until today, the meanest and fastest Mercedes-AMG. All of those have sold out, too, but there is one example listed in the classifieds for $699,888 plus government charges.
If you buy that one, you will be fast. But you will also have to be happy with second-best.
Once you go Black: Three AMG speed kings
The 2021 GT Black Series is the new king of the AMG world. It is the fastest and most powerful road car the company has ever made.
It is faster than the insane Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR road car that was built to win the Le Mans 24hr in the late 1990s – the race version of which Mark Webber famously flipped twice at more than 300km/h on the Mulsanne Straight. The CLK GTR had a 6.9-litre V12 good for 450kW and 775Nm, and did 0–100km/h in 3.8 seconds.
The Black Series is also faster than the previous king of the AMG crop, the AMG GT R Pro. That car has the familiar AMG 4.0-litre twin-turbocharged V8 in 430kW/700Nm tune and can accelerate from 0–100km/h in 3.5 seconds.
The GT Black Series accelerates from 0–100km/h in 3.2 seconds, astonishingly fast for a two-wheel-drive car. It will hit 200km/h in under nine seconds, and will go on to a top speed of 325km/h.
If you’re after a Nurburgring comparison of the GT R Pro and the GT Black Series, then Mercedes-AMG is only too happy to oblige.
Professional race driver Maro Engel has put a GT Black around the 20.8km Nurburgring Nordschleife in 6min 48sec, roughly 16 seconds faster than the time he did in a GT R Pro.
That’s the fastest time ever by a road car, outpacing the previous record-holder Porsche’s 992-series 911 GT2 (6min 59.93sec) by 11 seconds. And Mercedes-AMG believes the Black can go faster. They say Engel did the run at dusk, as evidenced by this gripping onboard video. Secondly, they claim that the track’s temperature at that time was just 10 degrees Celsius (ambient temp was seven degrees), which is sub-optimal for tyres.
Black Series: Six of the Best
The GT Black Series is the last of the AMG GT range to arrive in Australia, seven years after the GT debuted here in 2014.
It is the sixth model to get the ‘Black Series’ treatment, after the SLK (2006), CLK (2007), SL (2008), C-Class coupe (2011) and SLS (2012).
At Mercedes-AMG, the Black Series badge is an expression of ultimate performance. Every facet of the vehicle is honed to make it as fast as possible around a racetrack while remaining road legal.
There is no launch timetable or release schedule for Black Series models. Mercedes-AMG says it is applied only when an appropriate donor car nears the end of its model cycle.
That makes Black Series variants the ultimate swan song.
Want to catch them all? Read our Black Beauties feature here.
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