The Other German

Why the Mercedes-AMG GT might be the smarter buy — and the bigger future classic — than the 911.

Before you close this tab and go looking for a pitchfork, let me concede the obvious: the Porsche 911 is the greatest sports car ever built. Not one of. The. It has been in continuous production since 1964, it has won essentially everything worth winning, and it is the yardstick every rival gets measured against — which is why automotive journalism has spent five decades producing headlines like "911 Killer" and "Can It Beat the 911?" and then, roughly nine times out of ten, arriving at the conclusion you already knew when you clicked: no, and the Porsche also has better cupholders.

So this is not an argument that the 911 is bad. That would be like arguing water is overrated, or that having a beer is never a good idea. This is an argument that the very things making the 911 great are also, quietly, the things that will make a first-generation Mercedes-AMG GT the more interesting car to own in twenty years — and possibly the smarter check to write today.

The Problem With Being Perfect

The 911 is now in its eighth generation, and Porsche has become extraordinarily good at a particular kind of alchemy: turning one car into an entire product portfolio. For the 2025 model year alone, the 911 lineup ran to roughly twenty distinct trims — Carrera, Carrera S, Carrera T, Carrera GTS, Carrera 4 GTS, Targa, Turbo, Turbo S, GT3, GT3 Touring, GT3 RS, S/T, and a rotating cast of anniversary editions, each with its own carefully differentiated personality and its own carefully differentiated price. It is genuinely impressive. It is also starting to feel less like a lineup and more like a comic-book multiverse — dozens of variants, each canonically distinct, several of them nearly impossible for a normal human being to tell apart at a stoplight.

That is Porsche's greatest commercial achievement and, for our purposes, its one exploitable weakness. Ubiquity is the enemy of head-turning. When a 911 drives past, nobody outside the enthusiast bubble can identify the generation, the trim, or the model year, because there is almost certainly another 911 parked a block away wearing a subtly different badge. Familiarity has been very, very good to Porsche's balance sheet. It has not been kind to the goosebumps.

Mercedes Has Been Circling This for Forty Years

The AMG GT did not appear out of nowhere. Mercedes has been building fast two-doors since the 300 SL Gullwing (W198) put gullwing doors and fuel injection into the same sentence in 1954, and the SL badge has wandered through the W113 "Pagoda," the long-serving R107, the R129, and the R230 across the decades. For most of that run, though, the SL was a boulevard cruiser first and a sports car second — beautifully built, quick enough, and not remotely the sort of thing you cross-shopped against a Porsche.

That changed in 2002, when AMG bolted a supercharged 5.4-liter V8 into the R230 and called it the SL 55 AMG. Roughly 493 horsepower, zero to sixty in the mid-four-second range, and a folding metal roof, all in a car that would also take you to dinner without loosening your fillings. Two years later the SL 65 arrived with a twin-turbo V12 and 604 horsepower — an amount of engine even the Hulk would have trouble holding back, and remains, even now, an absurd figure for a convertible. Suddenly Mercedes was a contender: they had built something as fast as the sports car establishment, considerably more comfortable, and easier to drive quickly thanks to a generation of new electronics. It landed, conveniently, right in the middle of Porsche's most awkward era, when the 996's headlights were busy dividing the faithful into camps that still are not speaking.

What followed was a decade of increasingly serious attempts: the brilliant, flawed, faintly deranged SLR McLaren, and then the SLS AMG, a gorgeous, gull-winged love letter to 1954 that also happened to be AMG's first fully in-house sports car — even the roadster version could not quite make it a genuine 911 rival. The AMG GT is what those two produced when left alone together: smaller than the SLS, cheaper than the SLR, and considerably more focused than either.

The Car Itself

The first-generation AMG GT was revealed in September 2014, shown publicly at the Paris Motor Show that October, and reached customers in March 2015 — worth pinning down, because it is frequently misremembered as a 2016 car. It ran, in various forms, until 2022.

It is, still, an event. The proportions are a 1950s front-engine sports car taken to a slightly unreasonable extreme — a hood you could land aircraft on, a cabin shoved so far rearward the driver sits nearly over the back axle, and a stubby tail that makes the whole thing look permanently mid-pounce. It sounds, thanks to a hand-built 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 mounted behind the front axle, like a thunderstorm with a grudge. And the engineering underneath is genuinely serious: the transmission is a seven-speed dual-clutch mounted at the rear as a transaxle, the same basic layout logic Porsche uses on its front-engine cars and Ferrari used on the epic 599. This is not a dressed-up coupe. It is a real sports car that happens to have a leather-lined interior.

One correction to the folklore, and it cuts against the "simplicity" argument a little: the first-generation GT was not a two-engine, two-body-style affair. It was a one-engine car — the M178 twin-turbo V8, in an escalating series of tunes — offered as a coupe and, from 2017, a roadster. What multiplied were the trim levels: GT, GT S, GT C, GT R, GT R Pro, and the Black Series, spanning roughly 456 to 730 horsepower depending on how you count the Black Series. So Mercedes was not immune to variant creep either. The difference is one of scale and of kind: every one of those cars shares a single engine and a single silhouette, whereas Porsche's twenty trims span naturally aspirated and turbocharged engines, rear- and all-wheel drive, coupes, cabriolets, and Targas. Mercedes built one car and turned up the wick. Porsche built an ecosystem.

The Case for Future-Classic Status

Here is the argument, stated plainly: the first-gen AMG GT is currently sitting at the bottom of its depreciation curve, and the historical pattern for cars like this says it does not stay there forever.

Consider the air-cooled 911 precedent, which is instructive and also slightly different from how most people remember it. The 993 — the last air-cooled 911, built through 1998 — was genuinely affordable for years afterward. It got cheaper when the 996 arrived, and cheaper still when the 997 landed. The values did not truly detonate until the mid-2010s, with the sharpest appreciation running roughly 2014 through 2018 and a peak around 2017 and 2018, when good 993s went from used-Porsche money to serious-collectible money. That is a gap of roughly twenty years from end of production to the top of the market — not, as is sometimes remembered, a pandemic-era phenomenon. The pandemic boom lifted nearly everything; the air-cooled climb was already well underway years before anyone had heard of a lockdown.

Apply that clock to the AMG GT and the math is straightforward. First-generation cars from 2015 and 2016 are now a decade old. Clean GT S examples currently average in the high $70,000s, with the softest recorded sales dipping into the mid-$50,000s; base GT coupes trade for less. Twenty years from the start of production puts us around 2035 — and by then, the GT will be remembered as something specific and unrepeatable: a naturally exuberant, rear-drive, hand-built V8 sports car from the last moment before electrification and the second-generation car's shift to all-wheel drive changed the recipe permanently.

Because that is what happened. The second-generation AMG GT (C192) arrived for 2024 as a larger, heavier, all-wheel-drive 2+2 with a nine-speed automatic and, in flagship form, a plug-in hybrid V8 making well north of 800 horsepower. It is a magnificent machine and probably the better car by every objective measure. It is also, unmistakably, a different kind of car. The first-generation GT is now the last rear-drive-only, two-seat, purely internal-combustion AMG GT there will ever be, and "last of its kind" is the single most reliable phrase in the entire collector-car business.

Now Let Me Argue Against Myself

A responsible version of this article has to admit the ways it could be wrong, and there are several.

The strongest counterargument is simply that the 911 keeps its value precisely because Porsche builds so many versions of it. That enormous, confusing lineup creates an equally enormous, deeply liquid used market with clear pricing, a global specialist support network, and a parts supply that will outlive most of us. When you buy a 911, you are buying into an ecosystem. When you buy an AMG GT, you are buying a car — a wonderful one, but one whose out-of-warranty maintenance is handled by fewer shops, whose parts cost what Mercedes says they cost, and whose most commonly reported quirks (dynamic engine and transmission mounts, occasional electronic gremlins) are the sort of thing that turns a fun weekend into a four-figure invoice. Owner reports and used-car reviews generally rate the GT as solid mechanically, with 2018 through 2020 cars considered the sweet spot, but nobody has ever described running one as cheap.

The second counterargument is that "rare" and "valuable" are not synonyms. Automotive history is littered with low-production cars that stayed low-value for decades because not enough people wanted them. Rarity only becomes worth money when it collides with genuine desire, and there is a real possibility the AMG GT ends up admired without ever becoming collectible — the automotive equivalent of a critically acclaimed record nobody actually plays anymore.

And third: the 911 might just keep winning. It has, so far, absorbed every technological shift thrown at it — water cooling, turbocharging, PDK, hybridization — while somehow becoming more valuable, not less. Betting against the 911 is a trade with an unbroken losing record. This article is, at its core, an argument that the pattern eventually breaks. It might not.

Betting against the 911 is a trade with an unbroken losing record. This article argues the pattern eventually breaks. It might not.

The Other Name on the List

If you have read this far nodding along, there is an obvious question waiting: if rarity plus reputation plus a short two-generation run is the formula, why not an Audi R8?

It is a fair challenge, and honestly, the R8 makes the same case nearly as well. Two generations — the Type 42 from 2007 to 2015, the Type 4S from 2015 to 2024 — roughly 44,000 built worldwide across seventeen years, universally admired, permanently discontinued, and blessed with a naturally aspirated V10 that is arguably one of the single greatest-sounding engines of the modern era, with the Lexus LFA and Porsche Carrera GT the only real competition for that title. It is also, in its later form, the last non-hybrid, naturally aspirated ten-cylinder supercar Audi will ever sell. If the AMG GT's pitch is "last of its kind," the R8's is at least as strong.

Where they diverge is in what they actually are. The R8 is a mid-engine supercar wearing sensible shoes — brilliant, but a two-seat, low-slung, occasion-only machine that shares its bones with a Lamborghini Huracán and, in the used market, tends to be priced accordingly. Averages across the R8 range run north of $100,000, with V10 cars commonly well above that; the entry point sits considerably higher than a first-gen AMG GT's. The Mercedes is the one you can actually use — a front-engine grand tourer with a trunk, a usable ride, and enough civility to survive a commute, which is precisely the argument the 911 has been winning with for sixty years. If your priority is the noise and the poster on the wall, buy the Audi. If your priority is a car you can drive on a Tuesday that will still stop traffic on Saturday, the Mercedes has the better case.

Two other names come up constantly in this conversation, and both are worth a moment — not because they beat the argument, but because of what they reveal about it. A second-generation Aston Martin Vantage belongs on the shortlist too, for genuine shock-and-awe at surprisingly reasonable money.

The Lexus LC 500 — a certain classic, and the wrong comparison

Let me say the good part first, because it is not a small part. The LC 500 is an extraordinary machine, and it is going to be a classic. It has a 5.0-liter naturally aspirated V8 attached to one of the great exhaust notes of the modern era — a sound that no turbocharged engine has ever successfully imitated and no electric motor will ever attempt. It looks like the concept car it very nearly was, and unlike most concept-car shapes it has aged into something timeless rather than dated. Production ends in August 2026 after an eight-year run, with fewer than 18,000 built. Naturally aspirated V8s are effectively finished. That is a future-classic résumé and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

But it is a different animal, and putting it on this list next to the AMG GT, the R8, the Vantage and the 911 quietly misrepresents all five. The LC is a grand tourer in the old and honorable sense — heavy, effortless, magnificently comfortable, and unbothered by the idea of a lap time. It does not want to be driven the way those cars want to be driven, and holding it to that standard is a category error rather than a criticism.

Then there is the thing that makes it genuinely different from every other car in this article: it is a Lexus. The service network is Toyota's. The failure modes are Toyota's. Nobody buys an LC 500 and lies awake wondering what a dynamic engine mount costs. And that is precisely why it does not test this thesis. The argument for the AMG GT depends on a car being slightly exotic and slightly frightening — rare enough to be special, temperamental enough that most people talk themselves out of it, which is exactly what leaves them cheap for a while. The LC is neither. Its risk profile is a Camry's, and its reward profile is a Camry's too.

The market has already worked this out. There is no dip to buy into. Clean used cars sit around $60,000 against a sticker near $100,000, higher-mileage examples in the $50,000s, and low-mileage Bespoke Builds have been changing hands at or near their original window sticker. The LC never fell far enough for anyone to be early. Which is the whole point: buy an LC 500 because you want an LC 500, not because you think you have found something the market has missed. There is nothing to miss. Everyone already knows.

The Bentley Continental GT — cheap is not the same as coming back

And then the useful counter-example, the one that keeps this article honest. On paper the used Continental GT looks like the best value in the history of the automobile: hand-built in Crewe, a twin-turbocharged W12, a cabin that shames things costing four times as much, and early cars trading in the $20,000s to $50,000s. It has looked like that for well over a decade. It has not moved.

The reason is arithmetic. Bentley passed 80,000 Continental GTs in early 2021, averaging roughly five thousand cars a year since 2003. Whatever else it is, it has never once been rare. Add running costs frightening enough to keep buyers away from the bottom of the market, and you get a car that is permanently cheap without ever being collectible — glamorous, plentiful, and going nowhere.

That is a warning shot for this article's thesis and I would rather fire it myself. Low price is not a coiled spring. The AMG GT's case rests on rarity and desire arriving together; the Bentley is what it looks like when only one of them shows up.

Which brings it back to the R8 — the one that genuinely tests the argument rather than sidestepping it, and the reason it earned a section of its own.

The Vitals

So, What Are You Actually Buying?

Let me be clear about the thing this article is not. It is not a claim that the AMG GT is a better car than the 911. Across most objective measures — usability, resale confidence, service network, sheer engineering depth — the Porsche wins, and it wins comfortably enough that arguing otherwise requires more enthusiasm than evidence.

What it is, is a request that you widen the search. There is a strong gravitational pull toward the 911 when you are shopping this segment, and it is entirely rational: with twenty trims on offer, there is always one that fits your budget, your use case, and whatever your conscience is telling you at two in the morning. That is a genuinely great problem to have. But it also means that at roughly $60,000 to $80,000, you have a real choice — and one of those options is a hand-built, twin-turbo V8, rear-drive Mercedes that people still stop and stare at, and the other is a car that three of your neighbors have already parked in their driveways.

Yes, the sensible move is a new Mazda MX-5. It costs less, it will never let you down, it will make you laugh every single day, and it asks nothing of you but gas and affection. It is, by any reasonable metric, the correct answer, and roughly nobody reading this is going to choose it. Because we are not shopping for correct. We are shopping for the thing that makes the garage feel like an occasion — for the car that is a little unreasonable, a little rare, and a little too loud for the neighborhood, with a small but non-zero chance of costing us money we did not plan on spending. We do it anyway, because the alternative is sensible transportation, and nobody has ever walked back into the house, looked out the window one more time, and grinned at sensible transportation.