Just a few months after Mercedes-Benz laid out its vision for future EV sedan design language with the Mercedes-Benz Vision EQXX—which we think previews the upcoming production EQC—AMG is stepping up with its own Vision. Because you can’t have too many visions, apparently, and everything future oriented must adopt that V-word. Does this make it the Mercedes-AMG Vision AMG? What really matters is that it is, ahem, the shape of things to come. That design language has a name—Sensual Purity—and the Vision AMG translates this through a filter of electrified aggression
AMG says it was going for a “monolithic” look—less about a massive overall size and more about appearing as much like a single, unbroken, solid shape as possible. There are a minimum of joints and shut-lines, to keep the form smooth. The rear and side windows are painted, too, to match the car, studded with small dots like the wrap you’ll see covering the entire side of a bus. Theoretically you can see through it, but this is pure concept car fantasy. It does make for a striking profile, though.
The proportions have a sort of idealized Porsche Taycan vibe, with a lower and longer roof and tauter, more flowing rear flanks—things you can do when the shape doesn’t have to meet any production requirements. There’s a lot of EQXX in the design, too, although the styling of the sloping tail is a little more fluid and a lot more wild. The six round taillights, glowing like exhaust ports for a fusion reactor or something equally sci-fi, the giant AMG logo on the tail, the thin taillight slice and the huge, protruding rear diffuser. There’s a lot going on out back, with almost an early-1990s Italian concept car undertone. Wild, but awesome.
Up front, the AMG signature grille has been reinterpreted for EV duty, with illuminated vertical stripes. A big tristar on the hood draws a link with the AMG Project One. The headlights, though, are the most unusual and intriguing aspect of the front end: three separate starlike elements, like an abstract Mercedes tristar, with the innermost connecting to the horizontal light bar. They’re a little menacing, a little alien, and a lot awesome. The EQXX’s front lamps have tristar elements within large (perhaps too large) enclosures, the the Vision AMG has evolved past the need for a glassed-in housing. It’s just flowing metal and light ports.
The overlaid tristar graphical elements around the rear fenders seem, at first, incongruous—why interrupt the very organic shape with some interloping vinyl?—but they’re there to draw a tenuous link to the company’s Formula 1 team, Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1. Lose them and the shape would be cleaner and more imposing, probably.
We don’t expect the Vision AMG to move to production looking anything like this. Instead, expect the future electric AMGs—which will utilize AMG’s unique AMG.EA vehicle platform—to run with some elements of its design. The EQXX is, Mercedes tells us, explicitly the pattern for future cars from the brand. They won’t look exactly like it, but many of the tropes trotted out for the concept will return in production cars, like the lack of even a cosmetic grille and the overall long-tail shape. We think the Vision AMG will serve as the, ahem, vision-holder for future AMG production EVs, which will start appearing around 2025.
