SPY PICS: AMG GT Black Series revisited

The car pictured here, complete with winglets flanking the front apron, big five-spoke alloys and a large rear spoiler, is believed to be the road-going version of the GT3-homologated Mercedes-AMG GT concept that made its debut in Geneva earlier this year.

This particular vehicle, wearing a different registration plate than the car seen testing in our video back in May, is likely to be built to the same 'Black Series' configuration, albeit with minor changes to test the aero design.

As we reported at the end of February, the GT3 track version is rumoured to be built around the old 6.2-litre V8 that originally powered the SLS. No matter how close Mercedes-AMG cares to associate the road-going version with the track version, the Black Series – presuming that's how it will be named – seems unlikely to revert to the naturally-aspirated engine for the road.

This high-performance road-going GT will target Porsche's 911 GT3, but won't wear the GT3 tag itself itself. Nor will it be named 'Black Series', AMG boss Tobias Moers has insinuated. That name is to be reserved for something offering even more performance potential, Autocar reports.

But it's hard to imagine what would offer more performance than this car, which is expected to be as much as 100kg lighter than the GT S variant, and delivering peak power up to nearly 450kW. The 4.0-litre engine shares its architecture with the 2.0-litre four in the A 45 AMG, so its current power rating in the AMG GT S leaves it very understressed. It has what it takes to up the ante by a considerable margin, in other words.