Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series

The GT Black Series is the sixth car to wear the Black Series badge and the hardest road car Mercedes-AMG had built when it appeared in 2021. It uses the AMG GT coupé as its base, with the engine set well back behind the front axle, a carbon-fibre torque tube running to a seven-speed dual-clutch transaxle at the rear and the body panels — bonnet, roof, front wings, tailgate — remade in carbon fibre. The 4.0-litre V8 biturbo is rated at 730 PS, making it the most powerful engine AMG had developed around its own V8 at the time.

The point of the car is not the output figure on its own but how much of the standard GT was replaced to use it. Suspension is by coil-over units adjustable for ride height and damping, the track is wider, the cooling package is enlarged, and the aerodynamic hardware is functional rather than decorative.

The flat-plane V8 behind the Black Series

The significant change is inside the engine. Where every other AMG V8 uses a cross-plane crankshaft with its throws at ninety degrees, the Black Series engine uses a flat-plane crank with the throws at one hundred and eighty degrees. That evens out the firing order between the two cylinder banks, which lets the exhaust pulses be separated more cleanly and allows a lighter rotating assembly and higher revs; the price is more vibration and a harder, higher-pitched sound closer to a racing V8 than a traditional AMG rumble. The aerodynamics follow the same logic, with an adjustable element in the front underbody and a large two-piece rear wing carrying an adjustable upper flap. In November 2020 the car lapped the Nürburgring Nordschleife in 6:48.047, then the fastest published time for a road-legal series production car.

Within the Batman Garage collection this is the sharpest point of the modern AMG story. Its predecessors and their prices are listed in our guide to every Mercedes-AMG Black Series model, the Nordschleife context sits alongside the Formula 1-derived AMG ONE and its own lap record, and the front-mid-engined layout goes back through the SLS AMG to the SLR McLaren 722 Edition.