Scheduled to hit showrooms in June, the AMG GTR is the most wonderfully lunatic express ion yet from Mercedes’s sports specialty team

by Evan Monroe

Since the summer of 1936, when Freddie March (the ninth Duke of Richmond) hosted a private “Lancia Car Club” on the grounds of his Goodwood House in West Sussex, UK, the since renamed Goodwood Festival of Speed has been a glorious adventure in often zany automotive excess, featuring Formula 1s, supercars, bikes, heritage cars, and rollout models.

Last June’s Goodwood featured the debut of the simply incredible Mercedes AMG GTR, an even-further sport weaked riff on the already amazing GT. Built on an aluminum platform that is a further evolution of Mercedes’s SLS architecture, the supercar is powered by a hand-built 4-liter twin-turbocharged V-8, outputting 577 horsepower. Scheduled for dealer availability in June, the GTR will come within two clicks of 200 mph and features a four-wheel steering system that, seemingly counterintuitively, turns rear wheels in a slightly opposite direction to the front at set speeds, as well as active flaps, one behind the front fascia. Much like airplane flaps (because we are, after all, discussing airplane speeds here), they generate down draft when necessary, in the case of the front flap up to 80 pounds of pressure over 100 mph. And not to worry: gigantic 15.4-inch front and 14.2-inch rear perforated steel rotors slow things down smartly.

Mercedes is still being a bit coy about asking prices, but our best guess is within a few deep breaths of $200,000.

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