From Mercedes-Benz, video-game dreams rendered real

Matthew Phenix

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•                                                                                 As a follow-up its Frankfurt motor show-stealing Concept S-Class Coupé, the German automaker presented something decidedly more outlandish – and arresting – at the Los Angeles show on 20 November

Designed for the sixth instalment in the Gran Turismo video game franchise, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this year, the AMG Vision Gran Turismo is a futuristic take on Mercedes’ revered 300SL racing car of 1952. Breathtaking on the auto-show floor, the car managed to make a nearby SLS AMG Black Series look positively staid – no small feat.
The Vision Gran Turismo’s fluidic carbon fibre composite body – fitted with gullwing doors, of course – encloses a stiff, lightweight aluminium space-frame structure and one of AMG’s hand-crafted twin-turbo  V8 engines, good for 585 horsepower and 590 pound-feet of torque. Curb weight is a trim 3,053lbs, giving the Gran Turismo a weight-to-power ratio of 5.2 pounds per horsepower, a figure that betters the SLS Black’s 5.49lb per hp mark. In other words, the Gran Turismo is, at least theoretically, capable of making the sprint from zero to 60mph in less than 3.5 seconds and pressing on well past 200mph.
Gran Turismo 6 for the Sony PlayStation 3 arrives in December; the AMG Vision Gran Turismo arrives, alas, merely in your dreams.