The disposal of the SLS’s gullwing doors perhaps ought to have made the GT an easier car to get in and out of.
In practice, it hasn’t made much difference. But the act of lowering yourself, dangling your backside over a sill wide and high enough to sit on, and then levering your legs up under your chin to squeeze your feet past the unusually close A-pillars doesn’t irk much. It really only increases the anticipation you feel in the build-up to thumbing that large starter button.
Credit to AMG, while we’re on the subject, for doing a sufficiently thorough job of the right-hand drive conversion that the starter button has been moved to the driver’s side of the transmission tunnel console.
That centre console seems to have risen and swollen from normal proportions like some shiny metallic soufflé, but it could hardly feel more solid.
It’s dominated by eight buttons and knobs, all of them tactile and well labelled but sufficiently oversized that they wouldn’t look out of place on a toddler’s pedal car. Bigger is better in most things in the GT’s world. So it’s odd that the tiddly gear selector lever feels undernourished in your hand and is sited too far aft for optimum convenience.
The cabin design occasionally favours dramatic effect over usability, which is probably as it should be. The hazard warning toggle button is located on a roof console, making you feel like a fighter pilot as you come in to land on the hard shoulder. The analogue speedometer, meanwhile, is sufficiently heroically scaled and hard to read that the digital repeater is an absolute necessity.
But the GT has a rich-feeling and well-constructed cockpit that looks and feels exciting, eccentric and of distinguishing material quality.
It’s accessible and practical enough to use every day – thanks in no small part to a good-sized boot accessed by a liftback rear. And perhaps most important, it whets your appetite very nicely for what’s to come.
As for standard equipment both the coupé and roadster versions of the GT come with 19in alloy wheels, an AMG crafted bodykit, a performance exhaust system, an electrically extending rear spoiler and Mercede's active front air intake system as standard on the outside. On the inside, there is heated sports seats, a nappa leather upholstery, climate control and Mercedes-Benz Comand infotainment system complete with an 8.4in display, a built-in hard drive, DAB radio, sat nav, Bluetooth and the ability to integrate your smartphone to the GT to record your lap times or video the laps themselves. The Roadster also gains a cloth soft top, a wind deflector and Mercedes' Air Scarf system.
