Mercedes-Benz AMG GT R: A performance car peppered with mainstream technology

Driving a performance car is not so much about technology, as it is about speed and power. Yet, when a performance car is made for the roads, you have to put some technology in them. And Mercedes’ AMG GT R is one of the best examples of that.

The car is obviously not meant for your regular commute to office, but if you really want to, there’s technology that will assist you. For instance, the GT R has eight proximity sensors that recognise obstacles and possible collisions that might happen on the road. It alerts you when other cars are too close to it, much like regular road cars. It doesn’t have the S Class’ radar system for semi-autonomous features, but this still works. After all, the last thing you want on a car like this is for someone to side swipe you. Similarly, it has a Driver Attention Recognition system. This is designed to recognize when the driver loses attention or becomes drowsy while driving. If that does happen, the car can instantly alert you by making a sound. It can also put the alert on the instrument cluster in front of the driver.

Additionally, Mercedes’ Pre-Safe system comes built into this car. That can detect impending collisions and protect passengers by tightening the seat belts and rolling up the windows automatically. It also automatically unlocks the doors, so that in case of crashes, rescuers can evacuate the passengers with relative ease.

While this covers most of the safety tech inside this car, Mercedes has also fitted its own COMAND in-car system. This lets you connect your phone, navigate using Mercedes’ satellite-driven navigation system, and more. You can connect your phone to this via Bluetooth, to play music, take calls etc. You don’t get Android Auto or Apple Carplay support here, which are present in the saloon cars, and in turn, makes the infotainment system here less intuitive—a problem that many performance cars suffer from.

However, it does get good performance tuning. For instance, you can individually configure your suspension to be sporty or in comfort, which tunes the ride quality. You can do the same with engine performance and steering response, which take care of power delivery and handling on city roads.

As long as you’re driving in comfort mode, the 11 Burmester speakers inside will do an able job for music. It’s certainly not high-end audio, as you get in many luxury cars, but it’s not something worth complaining about either. At the end of the day, if you’re going to drive this car in racing and sports modes, the engine’s noise is all you really want to hear. The car can also detect what kind of roads you’re driving on, and how much power your current drive requires. By doing so, it decides how much of the engine to really use, thereby reducing fuel consumption. That’s a bit of technology that you would find in most performance cars, and pretty much never in your everyday road car.

If you consider the fact that almost no one is going to ask Mercedes what technology they put in this car, the GT R actually has a lot of tech inside. Anyone buying this car will almost certainly do so to drive on a track, which means most of this technology is secondary for them. To that end, what Mercedes provides inside fits the purpose for a performance car that is also road legal.