WATCH: Mercedes-AMG GT 63 SE a supercar in disguise [video]

Meet the Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S E Performance 4-Door Coupe. It’s a high-performance machine that is faster than just about any supercar on the road today, while also being able to be used as a full sized four-door family car that consumes less fuel than a hot hatch.

This is the result you get when you throw in fast-moving electricity with raw V8 bi-turbo petrol burning fury and mix it all up with some of the latest Formula 1 technology on the planet.

This was the first showing of what an electrified future looks like in the world of Affalterbach. And the performance offered by the Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S E Performance is unlike anything The Citizen Motoring has experienced before.

Up front you have that mighty 4.0-litre V8 bi-turbo engine, coupled to an electric motor and battery on the rear axle. Their combined power and torque is run down through a nine-speed automatic gearbox to a fully variable AMG Performance 4MATIC+ all-wheel drive system.

The most powerful series-production vehicle from Affalterbach offers a combined 620kW of power and 1 470Nm of near instant torque. Yes, you read that correctly, 620kW and 1 470Nm. Mind-numbing numbers! And this of course meant only one thing, get the Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S E Performance to Gerotek and see what it can do in a straight line.

Porsche holds record

Our time sheets see names like Porsche, Ferrari, McLaren, GT-R, BMW M and Audi RS jostling for the top spot. Only one off-the-showroom-floor car has yet run a sub three-second 0-100 km/h time. That prized spot belongs to the Porsche GT2 RS track weapon with a time of 2.85 seconds. This supercar also did a 10.48-second quarter mile and hit 268km/h in just 800m. This gives you a good idea of how fast, fast is.

Weighing in at a full 2.3 tons, with four-doors, full luxury interior and boot space for days, the Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S E Performance had almost pulled off the impossible. This AMG lit up the screen on my Racelogic VBOX with a time of 2.96 seconds to 100km/h to become just the second car to run under three seconds. It hit a quarter mile time in 10.77 and 261km/h in 800m. In its wake, dispatching anything remotely resembling a family car down the time sheets at the same time.

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Blink and its gone

To experience the level of urge that is on tap with the GT 63 S E Performance is something else. To try give you an idea, this AMG pulls from 60-100km/h in 1.6 seconds. From 80-120km/h in 1.9 seconds. And from 100km/h to 200km/h in a mere 6.5 seconds to put it ahead of the likes of a Ferrari 488 GTB Coupe. And this is just one example on a long list of very fast cars that are going to come second to this AMG in a street shootout.

But going fast in a straight line is easy. It’s when the road starts to twist and turn that the true mettle of high-performance car is tested. Once again it is fighting deep inside supercar territory and living on the edge where no family car should be.

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Splitting the supercars

To put the dynamic ability of the Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S E Performance into some sort of context, at the recent Simola Hillclimb event in Knysna, Clint Weston tackled the tight and bumpy 1.9km road course in this AMG. He brought the car home in second place, just behind JP van der Walt in a Porsche 911 Turbo S. But ahead of third-placed man, Garth Mackintosh in a McLaren 720S.

There is so much more I could say, from how cruising around silently in full electric mode to lighting up all four tyres off the line messes with your mind. But my colleague, Charl Bosch, has covered all the higher-grade technical points and specifications already.

To wrap up, if the Mercedes-AMG GT 63 SE Performance is capable of doing with a family car, can you imagine what is going to happen when we get our hands on the lighter, more dynamic, two-door version that has just been unveiled? The records will tumble, and the hill might get a new King.

Mercedes-AMG GT 63 test numbers