It was a gentle, sunny summer afternoon when a schmucky socialmediatard of zero apparent disctintion took it upon himself to poor-shame the wrong audience… for the wrong car. The set-up?
Mercedes‘ EV program has been struggling mightily these last few years. Duped by the “inEVitability” of market demand for the products of their multi-billion euro investments, their head-first plunge into the shallow depths of electric car cell phone manufacturing is going about as well as the Weimar debt repayment programme. Starting with the hapless realisation of the frumptastic 2022 EQS – foreshadowed not-in-the-slightest by the stunningly sinuous 2019 VISION EQSi concept – the Tristar’s approach to standalone EV models has been nothing less than showroom napalm, and a distinct counter-point to BMW’s much wiser shared-bodystyle approach.ii
Of course, unsatisfied with self-immolating their mainline brand, Stuttgart’s head honchos are apparently still keen to pyhrise their performance AMG division, first with 4-cylinder “63” badges,iii then with $3mn hypercars that set fire faster than you can count to “ONE”,iv and now with 1300+ horsepower BEV lumpenturds that will leave you with frightfully little change from your USD$ 300`000 cashier’s cheque.
But surely some slick marketing can cover up the stench of rotting electro-flesh, shooing the flies buzzing around this once-noble carcass? Mercedes certainly thinks so, which is why they’ve released curated “teasers” of their latest GT XX Concept, blandly camouflaged, LARP sounding,v and cursed with woefully on-the-nose LED daytime running lights.
The marketing even worked! At least on the aforementioned schmucky socialmediatard, who took to AMG’s comments section a few days before the concept’s reveal to defend the camo-clad dumpster fyre with a (now-deleted) comment along the lines of “Gotta love all Corolla/Civic owners hating in the comments even though they’ll never be able to afford one đ.”
While it’s been a good decade since I derived much pleasure in picking fights with internet nobodies, in a moment of weakness I responded to Schmucky: “Hate to break it to you but this car is guaranteed showroom poison, just like EQS and the rest of the failed Merc EV line. As someone who can afford one of these, this really isn’t a controversial perspective.”
To which he responded: “Dude you donât even know anything about the car! But sure just keep pretending like you know what youâre talking about.â
After which I had to level with the poor sod: “Ok let’s pretend for a moment you don’t know who I am or can’t figure it out, I still know it’s all-electric and I know it’s called “AMG”, which is exactly like being your dumb mother and being called a “virgin.” Anything beyond this isn’t really germane to our discussion. That’s really all there is to it.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, radio silence ensued, and next I checked the comments were beleeted.
Which brings us neatly back to the fully-revealed GT XX design itself, which is evidently Uhlenhaut-aping yet catfish-faced, neither coherently futuristic nor retro nor speaking to anything “AMG” aside from a slight nod to the Panamericana grill even though the net result is a whiff too much Maserati; not to mention the improbably SiĂĄn/’65-Impala hextuple taillightedness, profile slab-sidedness and roofline headroom-lessness, all of which results in a design in desperate need of Frank Stephenson’s bic-penned makeover.vi Nothing about this design says “masculine” or “macho” the way AMGs have historically done. These are muscle cars we’re talking about here… and muscle cars have to be rough, loud, and scary. This is just femininized, fugly, and cucked.
Add to this Mercedes’ recent history of ultimately making cars that are mayyybe 1/10th as desirable as their conceptual forebearers and we’re left wondering how harsh the production-ready pill will really be to swallow. Does anyone think the entire US market can absorb much more than 100 / year for each of the very few years that Stuttgart can likely stomach making the thing at all,vii which it plans to do starting in 2027? Seriously, imagine spending Bentley Flying Spur money on a car this cramped, compromised, inelegant, and low-status. As an overall product, the GT XX EV appears to appels to neither Americans nor Russians nor Europoors nor even Chinese. At best, a few novelty-drunk Emiratis will get silly with the spec sheets on these and use them to race the 1/4 mile against their pet cheetahs and Lykan HyperSports, or whatever other bizarre esoterica scratches their teetotaling itches.
All of which is to say that, per the late Richard Feynman, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourselfâand you are the easiest person to fool.” So sorry AMG, but you’re not getting away from your combustion-engined duties quite that easily. Schmucks notwithstanding, Johnny Q. Public demands a little bit more voce forte from you, Dear Affalterbach.
- Remember back when Gordon Wagener had game?
- I actually spent a few days with the 2025 BMW 760i recently and came away rather impressed by the importance that the 5,200 lbs leviathan commanded on the road.
I’d personally opt for the i7 version for city duty, but the fact that the gas and electric versions look identical from the outside is a huge selling feature. If diesel-engined cars didn’t need alternative bodystyles to distinguish themselves, neither do BEVs? But out of all the German auto manufacturers, only BMW agrees with this thesis, and the sales figures don’t lie in their support for the roundel:
Brand (Group) 2024 BEV deliveries YoY change vs 2023 Share of brandâs total sales Headline ICE/BEV strategy* BMW (BMW + MINI + RR) 426,594 +13.5 % 17.4 % of 2.45 M units Same bodyshell, multi-energy CLAR toolkit â e.g. i4/4-GC, i5/5-Series, iX3/X3 BMW brand only 368,523 +11.6 % 16.8 % of 2.20 M Mercedes-Benz Cars 185,059 -23.1 % 9.3 % of 1.98 M Dedicated âEQâ silhouettes on EVA2/MMA â EQS vs S-Class, EQE vs E-Class, EQB vs GLB Audi 164,000 -8 % 9.8 % of 1.67 M Distinct e-tron bodies on MEB/PPE â Q4 e-tron, Q8 e-tron, e-tron GT Porsche 20,836 (Taycan only) -49 % 6.7 % of 311 k Single halo EV on J1 platform (Taycan); Macan EV starts 2025 on PPE - W206 we hardly knew ye. ↩
- Sure why not have external audio speakers in the headlights… lord help us all… as if minor fender benders weren’t totalling cars easily enough already, nor attracting enough opportunistic burglars. Just imagine the insurance premiums when it’s $30k for a single new light cluster!
- Frank the Tank indeed!
- For context, Flying Spurs move at 5-10x that rate. ↩