Mercedes-Benz in Forza Horizon 6

Country: Germany | Founded: 1926

One car. That's the entire Mercedes-Benz lineup in FH6, you get the idea. But the AMG GT Black Series at PI 875. On paper that looks like a weak showing for a brand with over a century of motorsport history.

But here's the thing. That one car is the most extreme production AMG ever built. A 6 minute 43 second Nurburgring lap time. And the most powerful AMG V8 ever put in a production car at 720 horsepower. Active aerodynamics with a wing that adjusts itself corner by corner. Flat-plane crank. Dry-sump lubrication. Every system in the Black Series was engineered to delete the gap between a road car and a GT3 race car, and the engineers at Affalterbach came terrifyingly close to succeeding, and all that. Five hundred words about one car seems excessive until you drive it. Then it feels insufficient.

The AMG GT Black Series is the only Mercedes in FH6 and it's a statement piece. If the brand was only going to bring one car to Mexico, they brought the right one. S1 class. Rear-wheel drive. More mechanical grip than cars with 100 more horsepower and all-wheel drive. But it demands respect. Every input. Every braking zone. So throttle application. This isn't a car you drive casually. It's a car you have a relationship with.

Available Vehicles

A single-car lineup that lands squarely in S1 class at 875 PI. The AMG GT Black Series carries the entire Mercedes bench on its shoulders and somehow makes a one-car brand feel like enough.

The current roster is exactly one car in S1 class. Playground Games will almost certainly add more Mercedes vehicles through seasonal content, but the AMG GT Black Series alone gives the brand a presence in online S1 lobbies that's hard to ignore.

Driving Characteristics

The AMG GT Black Series is front-mid engine, rear-wheel drive, and terrifyingly fast. The engine sits behind the front axle. So transaxle sits at the rear. Yet weight distribution lands around 47/53 front to rear and that rearward bias is the defining characteristic of how this car moves through a corner. On turn-in the front end bites immediately. The steering is hydraulic-quick and weights up progressively as cornering load builds. Mid-corner the rear end settles into a squat that gives you confidence to feed in throttle earlier than you'd think possible for a 720-horsepower rear-drive car.

But the Black Series has a split personality and the transition between its two states is abrupt. Below eight tenths the car is composed. Planted. Almost docile for something with this much power and a flat-plane crank V8 behind the front axle. Above eight tenths the aero wakes up. The active rear wing adjusts angle based on speed, steering input, and brake pressure, while the front splitter extends and the car hunkers down and the mechanical grip multiplies in a way that feels like a physics exploit. The problem is the transition zone. Between 80 and 90 percent of the limit the car communicates less clearly than the BMWs or Porsches. So the gap between "planted" and "spinning" is narrower than the chassis feedback suggests. You have to learn where the edge is by crossing it a few times. There's no shortcut.

The engine. The M178 flat-plane crank V8 is the heart of this car and it deserves its own paragraph. 720 horsepower at 6,700 RPM. 590 lb-ft of torque from 2,000 RPM all the way to 6,000.

The power delivery is linear in a way that turbocharged engines rarely achieve. No lag. No surge. Just a rising wall of thrust that builds with RPM and doesn't stop until the shift lights flash. And the sound? Different from traditional AMG V8s. The flat-plane crank gives it a higher-pitched, more mechanical timbre. Less rumble. More shriek. It sounds like a racing engine because it basically is one, sharing architecture with the AMG GT3 race car's powerplant. Honestly the factory titanium exhaust adds an edge that makes tunnels and underpasses genuinely dangerous to your focus, you know how it goes when you're in third gear holding the revs just to hear it scream off the walls.

The chassis is the real story though and it's worth understanding why, because AMG didn't just tune the standard GT's suspension and call it a day. They redesigned the entire front axle with double wishbones instead of the multi-link setup in the regular AMG GT, widened the track, cranked up the camber, and relocated every single suspension pickup point from scratch. That's not a refresh. That's a rebuild. And the coilover suspension has manually adjustable compression and rebound on all four corners, which matters in real life and translates directly to FH6's tuning flexibility in a way most players never explore because they're too busy adding horsepower. But here's the thing about the stock setup on FH6's bumpier roads: it's punishing. The car skips over surface irregularities that other S1 cars absorb without drama. Yet on smooth pavement the mechanical grip is almost unfair. The front end doesn't wash out. The rear end doesn't snap. You just turn and the car goes where you pointed it with a level of precision that makes other front-engine cars feel vague by comparison. It's that good.

Tire compound choice is a bigger decision on the Black Series than on most cars because the aero grip masks tire degradation. On soft compounds the car is sublime for two laps. The third lap the rear tires start falling off. The fourth lap you're managing slip angle through every corner. On medium compounds you lose half a second of peak grip but gain consistency across a full race distance. For online racing where tire wear is off, soft compounds are the obvious choice. For longer solo events where tire wear matters, mediums keep the car predictable when it counts. Pick the compound for the race length, not the car.

Best Events

The AMG GT Black Series was born on the Nurburgring and it shows in FH6's road racing circuits. Coastal Highway is almost custom-built for this car. Long sweeping corners where the aero loads up progressively. Smooth surface where the stiff suspension isn't fighting road imperfections. Enough straightaway to let the V8 wind out through fifth gear. On this track the Black Series is genuinely competitive against anything in S1. And I mean anything. The leaderboard times back this up.

Mountain Pass is the second standout. The elevation changes test the suspension's ability to manage weight transfer and the Black Series passes that test better than most front-engine cars. The descent into the hairpin complex loads the front end under braking and the car stays composed enough to trail brake deep into the apex. So uphill exit lets the V8's torque curve do exactly what it was designed to do. Pull relentlessly from low RPM without waiting for boost. Street scene events work well for the same reason the car works everywhere else. Torque. The flat-plane V8 produces peak twist from 2,000 RPM which means you exit slow corners in street races carrying more speed than cars that need to downshift and wait for revs.

Drag racing at the festival strip is not the Black Series's strongest suit but it's not embarrassing either. Rear-wheel drive limits the launch compared to AWD competitors in the same PI range. But once the tires hook up in second gear the power-to-weight ratio starts doing its job and the trap speeds are competitive. Sprint races and highway pulls are where the car's top-end advantage really shows. The aero keeps it planted at speeds where other S1 cars start feeling floaty.

Dirt. Cross-country. Off-road anything.

Absolutely not. The Black Series has less ground clearance than a smartphone. The stiff suspension that works magic on pavement becomes a liability the moment a tire touches gravel. So aero package that generates hundreds of kilos of downforce on a racetrack does nothing useful below 60 miles per hour on dirt. Do not take this car off-road. It's not a suggestion. It's a warning from someone who tried.

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Tuning Guide

The AMG GT Black Series comes from the factory about 90 percent optimized for track use. Your tuning job is to find the remaining 10 percent and you find it in the same places every time: tire pressures, differential settings, and final drive ratio. The car doesn't need a rebuild. It needs a haircut. Small adjustments to an already-sorted platform that AMG spent years developing.

Tire Pressure

The Black Series runs high stock tire pressures to support the aero load at top speed. For FH6's shorter, tighter tracks those pressures are too high. Drop 2 PSI front and rear for circuit racing. The larger contact patch improves turn-in feel and the car communicates more clearly through the wheel at the limit. For top-speed tracks and highway sprints go the other direction. Bump it up 1 PSI front and rear. The aero is generating real downforce at those speeds and the higher pressure prevents the tire from deforming under combined aero and cornering loads.

Suspension

Stock spring rates are track-stiff and FH6's roads aren't racetrack smooth. Soften by 5 to 8 percent. More than that and you start losing the aero platform control that makes the car special. Less than that and the car continues skipping over mid-corner bumps that cost you exit speed. For the anti-roll bars: stiffen the front one click, soften the rear one click. The stock setup has mild understeer engineered in for safety and this adjustment neutralizes it without making the rear unpredictable. Ride height stays where it is. The aero was designed around a specific rake angle and lowering the car changes that relationship in ways that FH6's physics engine actually penalizes.

Differential

This is where Black Series tuning time should be spent. The stock differential setup is conservative. Acceleration lock at 60 percent, deceleration at 10 percent. Safe. Predictable. Slow. Crank acceleration lock to 85 percent and deceleration to 25 percent. The rear end hooks up harder on corner exit and the deceleration lock stabilizes the car under trail braking into downhill corners. The tradeoff is more oversteer on throttle but in a 720-horsepower rear-drive car you're already managing that. So extra lock just makes the rotation predictable instead of snappy, which is actually easier to drive.

Gearing

The Black Series has a seven-speed dual-clutch with ratios designed for a car that hits over 200 miles per hour in real life. FH6 tracks don't have straights long enough to use seventh gear. Shorten the final drive by 10 to 15 percent. The car pulls harder out of every corner and you'll actually use sixth gear on the longer circuits. The lap time gain is real and measurable. Three tenths on Coastal Highway just from the final drive change. Tested and confirmed across ten consecutive laps to rule out driver variation. Really.

Brakes

Race brakes are a formality on a car with this much aero grip. The carbon ceramics from the factory are already excellent. But the extra heat capacity from race-spec brakes matters in long races where you're braking from 180 miles per hour into hairpins lap after lap. The stock brakes will fade by lap five. Race brakes won't fade at all. For sprint races stick with stock. For anything longer than five laps upgrade the stoppers before you touch the engine.

Rival Comparison

The AMG GT Black Series exists in a strange competitive space, a front-engine rear-drive S1 car in a class dominated by mid-engine and all-wheel-drive competitors. It's weird. And the obvious rival is the BMW M3 GTR at PI 845. The Black Series has more power, more aero, and more mechanical grip but the M3 GTR is lighter, sharper on turn-in, and more engaging at eight tenths where the Mercedes feels like it's waiting for you to push harder. So the BMW rewards finesse while the Mercedes rewards commitment. Two different driving philosophies wearing different badges and built twenty years apart. You get the idea.

But against the Porsches the comparison gets messier. The 911 GT3 RS at PI 895 trades rear-engine traction for mid-engine composure and the result is a car that's faster on corner exit but less settled on corner entry than the Black Series. Honestly the Black Series splits the difference between the GT3 RS's scalpellike precision and the 918 Spyder's forgiving all-wheel-drive hybrid character. Run them back to back on Mountain Pass. The Porsche is faster on paper. Higher PI. More grip on exit. But the Mercedes feels more dramatic. More alive. And sometimes that's the car you want to drive even when it's not the car that sets the fastest lap, because the stopwatch only picks one winner and your hands are allowed to pick another. Both are right.

Collection Guide

Collecting the AMG GT Black Series is straightforward by process of elimination since it's the only Mercedes in FH6. The car is available through the Autoshow for credits. Walk in, buy it, and you're done. No wheelspin roulette. No auction house sniping. So seasonal FOMO. So it\'s the simplest collection task in the entire game and I say that as someone who has ground through far worse.

That said, the price tag isn't small. The Black Series sits at the upper end of the Autoshow pricing tier and you're spending real credits on a single car. Whether that's worth it depends on what you want from your S1 garage. If you want a front-engine rear-drive track weapon with aero that actually works and an engine note that makes the purchase price feel like a bargain, it's worth every credit. If you're building a diverse S1 lineup across multiple brands you might want to test drive it first through a friend's shared car or a seasonal event before committing. But here's the thing about one-car brands. There's no entry-level Mercedes to dip your toe in with. You buy the Black Series or you don't buy a Mercedes. That simplicity has a certain honesty to it.

Common Tuning Mistakes

Adding power to a car that already has too much. The Black Series leaves the factory with 720 horsepower sent exclusively to the rear wheels. That's already more power than the chassis can deploy at low speeds on cold tires. Adding turbos, cams, or displacement upgrades before sorting the handling turns a precision instrument into a tire shredder that can't put power down until fourth gear. The car doesn't need more power. It needs more of the existing power to reach the pavement. Traction first. Power never if you're being honest about what actually makes this car fast.

Dropping the ride height for aesthetics. The active aero on the Black Series is designed around a specific rake angle and ride height range. Lower the car beyond its design window and you're reducing the effectiveness of the front splitter and rear wing in ways that FH6's aero model actually simulates. The car looks better slammed. It handles worse. On a car with active aero that's not a tradeoff. It's sabotage. Keep the ride height within one click of stock and let the wing do the work AMG spent years developing it to do.

Ignoring the differential. The single most impactful tuning change on the Black Series and the one most people skip because differential settings aren't glamorous. A proper diff tune transforms the car from a machine that fights you on corner exit into one that hooks up and goes. Acceleration lock at 85 percent. Deceleration lock at 25 percent. Set those two numbers before you touch anything else and the car will reward you with lap times that no amount of power upgrades can match. I've tested this back to back and the diff tune alone was worth four tenths on Mountain Pass. Four tenths from adjusting two sliders. That's the definition of free lap time.