Well, isn’t this just one enormous coincidence. Just as Audi takes the wraps off its first ever SQ9, complete with a honking great V8 and six-figure price tag, so Mercedes has chosen to remind us it has one of those on offer as well. Two, in fact: the GLS 63 will rival the Audi, the GLE there as an alternative to the SQ7 and RSQ8. None are going to win any beauty contests (or fit in many parking spaces), but they all offer up oodles of V8 goodness without a plug. Which ought to make them popular.
You’ll remember that AMG recently updated its powerfully built pair of bruisers, the introduction of the M177 Evo and its flat-plane crank (plus ‘advanced exhaust gas aftertreatment’, just as importantly) making them both Euro 7 compliant. While keeping 612hp and 627lb ft, pleasingly. Now we know what GLE 63 S, GLE 63 S Coupe and GLS 63 4Matic+ will cost. Or rather, we know the price in Europe, so can make a good guess at UK RRPs.
As is becoming all too familiar with new car prices in 2026, they’re even more than might be expected. When we drove a 612hp, twin-turbo V8 GLE in 2021, it was £117,095; the new one is €170,045 - or £145,000 at current exchange rates. A £25k climb in five years is pretty punchy, even allowing for the engine’s modifications. The AMG radiator grille, exclusive LED light signature and ‘performance-oriented interior’ might be doing a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to convincing customers of an upgrade.
The Coupe equivalent is more, at €175,662 - or £150k pretty much on the nose today. Before getting bigger wheels, the new Ireland Green paint, or any carbon fibre. That’s about par for the course, however: a Cayenne Coupe Turbo E-Hybrid starts at £147,300, and an X6 M Competition is officially £140k. V8s do not come cheap in 2026.
As the largest and most luxurious of the new super SUVs, the GLS 63 is obviously the most expensive. Its European price is €193,684, or £165,000. Yikes. The big boy has always been a hard one to pigeonhole, and that remains true today: an X7 M60i is less than £120k, but can only boast 530hp. A Range Rover SV is about there on price, though again doesn’t have the same formidable power. A Range Rover Sport SV does, while not being quite so vast as the Merc. Now, as ever, there really is nothing quite like a GLS 63, which is probably why it manages to soldier on: for those that want one, nothing else will quite cut it.
And that’s not all the news as far as preposterously powerful AMGs are concerned, either. Because the newly electrified GT 4-door is now on sale in the UK, available on the configurator with a plethora of colours to try and make it look good. We’re yet to find one. But there’s a heck of a lot of power on offer for the money, the 816hp GT55 retailing at £120k and the GT63 - replete with 1,169hp - coming in at £160k.
The equivalent Porsche Taycan is the Turbo S at £162,200, with a mere 952hp. It can claim the same insane 2.4-second sprint to 62mph, however. What a strange world we live in. To get more than 1,000hp from a Porsche Taycan requires spending £190,000 on a Turbo GT. What a twin test - and a pair of speeding fines - those two could make.
Perhaps we’re all just being a tad cynical: large, powerful, luxurious Mercedes-Benzes have always been expensive cars, and making the V8 fit for an ever more stringent world won’t have been a simple process. But factor in the depreciation that AMGs are just as famous for alongside the new prices and the secondhand examples surely look even more appealing (if super-SUVs are your bag).
This GLS 63, for example, isn’t far off factory fresh with 13,000 miles - and is little more than £90k. Still with some way to fall, sure, but a huge saving nonetheless. A 612hp GLE could be yours for £60,000, and examples with four-figure mileages are a lot less than £100,000. Best really, really like the fresh look and new car smell.
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