Mercedes-AMG GT C Coupe 2018 UK first drive

If you’ve been holding on for just the right kind of Mercedes-AMG GT, this might be your moment.

The GT C, driven here in the UK for the first time, slots into the range between the GT S and track-day-ready GT R. It adopts the active rear steering and electronically controlled locking differential of the latter but goes without the unyielding racing buckets, mad diffuser or rear wing (you get a dinky retractable spoiler instead).

Not that there isn’t drama here. You can most easily identify a C by the extraordinary breadth of its aluminium rear bodywork, which is 57mm wider than that of the standard car, and 305-section Michelin Pilot Supersport tyres. Meanwhile, the car’s maw gets the chrome braces of Mercedes’ ‘Panamericana’ grille, now found across the range. All in, AMG’s more affordable follow-up to the SLS still looks sensationally purposeful.

So purposeful, in fact, that you might wonder what might be required to loosen the vast rear contact patch. The answer is the same dry-sumped, twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 found elsewhere in the range; for the C, it develops 550bhp, bridging the gap between GT S and GT R and outgunning Porsche ’s 911 Turbo.

This 7000rpm M178 engine remains a spectacular device: low on lag, linear in delivery, flexible and, above all, brash and booming. In its more aggressive maps — selectable via Mercedes’ familiar Drive Select rotary control — it may well prove too theatrical for some, but for others that’ll be reason enough to buy the car.

It’s old-school AMG and, along with the abrupt, pillbox view through the windscreen, the sheer girth of the cabin, a high scuttle and tyres that function as huge echo chambers on anything other than a perfectly surfaced road, the GT C represents a sensory assault matched by few — if any — of it rivals.

It means that, although this car will devour big mileages, you’ll feel them in a way you wouldn’t in, say, an Aston Martin DB11, which in V8 guise shares the same engine as the GT. There is simply too much noise for properly relaxed progress and a mixed test route also returned only around 16.5mpg. Even with the car’s 75-litre fuel tank, that makes for a range of fewer than 275 miles.

The Mercedes-AMG GT isn’t a born tourer, then, but in C guise it’s a more convincing sports car than ever before.