Mercedes-Benz AMG GT vs Aston Martin DB12

What's the difference?

Once upon a time, people would dream about owning a Mercedes-Benz 450SLC – the C107 sports/luxury coupe flagship of the 1970s.

Sexy, stylish, secure and incredibly solid, it embodied the brand’s ‘Engineered Like No Other Car' mantra of the era.

Today’s all-new, second-generation, C192 AMG GT Coupe is something of an indirect descendant of this sort of thinking, changing tack from its supercar-esque 2014 C190 predecessor, with more space, more seats, more sensibility and, conversely, even more steak and sizzle from its glorious V8.

A modern-day SLC? The Porsche 911, Aston Martin DB12, Maserati GranTurismo and Bentley Continental GT’s worst nightmare? Or something else entirely?

These questions and more are answered below.

Aston Martin is best known for two things - being James Bond’s preferred mode of transport and building grand tourers.

The new DB12 is the latest in a long line of memorable grand tourers from Aston Martin that dates back to the DB2 of the 1950s and runs all the way through icons like the DB5 (1963-65) and more recently the DB7 (1993-2003), DB9 (2004-2016) and DB11 (2016-2023).

Except there’s a slight problem with this lineage - Aston Martin doesn’t think the DB12 is a ‘grand tourer.’ Instead, the brand has decided to define it as a ‘Super Tourer’ and claims this is a car that “takes a new direction” for a brand that is more than 100 years old.