‘V8 Styling’ in stark contrast to ‘Business’
The Mercedes-AMG GT 43 4-door is available with ‘V8 Styling’. Those who choose that will get the thick, striking front bumper of the 63 version, making the ‘modest’ 43 look fatter than it is. That is striking, because not so long ago you could make your AMG Mercedes look less fat than it was.
The ‘V8 Exterior Styling Package’ costs €3,509 and provides the basic version of the AMG-GT with the new, thick and sleek front bumper of the much faster 63 version, which in addition to a V8 also has a lot of electric power under the hood. Interesting detail: ‘intermediate version’ 53 has the V8 Styling package as standard in the Netherlands, while that car, just like the 43, has a six-cylinder under the hood. The V8 package is not that ‘V8’, but you get the idea. Mercedes offers 43 buyers the opportunity to make the car look thicker than it actually is, although an AMG bumper on an A180 does of course more or less the same.
The standard Mercedes-AMG GT 43 4-door above, the version with ‘V8 Styling’ below
What makes this option so interesting – in addition to the V8 name – is the fact that not so long ago Mercedes was the only manufacturer who made it possible to make an extremely thick car considerably more inconspicuous from the factory. This applied specifically to the W212 and perhaps also W213 generation of the blubber-thick Mercedes E63 AMG. For a while it was possible to equip these top E’s with a Business Line package, which, among other things, omitted the four enormous exhaust tips. Instead, the E63 buyer received the much more modest exhaust tips and rear bumper of a regular E in Avantgarde trim. Combine that with the elimination of the nameplates on the tailgate and possibly some modest alloys, and there will be few people left who will see that it is an E63.
One of those rare sharp people is Joep Janssen, who captured the above E63 ‘Business’ in Amsterdam years ago. We are grateful to him for that, because Mercedes even was and is certainly not generous with images of the Business version. Under the hood of the dark blue E-class Combi is a roaring V8 with 558 hp, but the car still looks relatively modest. Let’s face it: a wolf in sheep’s clothing is much nicer than a (relative) sheep in wolf’s clothing, isn’t it?
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl