While most of us were busy gobbling down copious amounts of holiday poultry, Mercedes-AMG was hard at work at the Nürburgring, attempting to break one of the Green Hell’s many lap records.
Taking the title of fastest production SUV to lap the Nordschleife is the Mercedes-AMG GLC 63 S 4MATIC+, with a time of 7:49.369. That’s 2.3 seconds faster than the previous record holder, Alfa Romeo’s Stelvio Quadrifoglio despite a whopping two horsepower deficit. That’s right, the AMG’s 4.0-liter biturbo V8 makes 503 horsepower while the Stelvio’s 2.9-liter twin-turbo V6 is good for 505 horses.
Perhaps the Merc bested the Italian not through power, but with finesse. The hot GLC is fitted with an air suspension with adaptive dampers, torque-vectoring all-wheel drive, a differential that can lock the rear axle, and ceramic composite brakes.
According to the company, the above lap wasn’t accomplished by some seasoned, big-name racing driver after multiple attempts but a development engineer named Markus Hofbauer on his first try. From his LinkedIn profile, Hofbauer apparently spent almost two decades working for Porsche before spending the last five at Mercedes-AMG. The man clearly knows his way around fast, German metal.
Last month, the Mercedes performance arm laid claim to another family-car Nürburgring record with the four-door AMG GT 63 S getting around the Green Hell in 7:25.41. While that wasn’t quicker than the Jaguar XE SV Project 8’s 7:21.23, it was argued that the Jag had its rear seats removed for the lap in question, making AMG’s “four-door coupe” the fastest four-door car to lap the Nürburgring with its rear seats intact…or as the company called it, the fastest “fully-fledged four-seater.”
Since we’re pretty sure both the GLC 63 and the Stelvio Quadrifoglio had all of their seats still attached during the respective ‘Ring runs, no loopholes or asterisks are needed this time around.