It’s hard to experience the essence of a car without actually sitting behind the wheel and hitting the right pedal, but that hasn’t stopped carmakers from trying to imbue other things with the caché of their most popular models.
Take this bicycle inspired by the new Mercedes-Benz AMG GT-S. It may be missing two wheels and a whole lot of horsepower, but is there anything sports car-ish about it?
A collaboration between Mercedes and German bicycle company Rotwild, the Rotwild GT S Inspired by AMG can actually perform in one area the car can’t.
That’s because this is a mountain bike, designed with input from Rotwild’s own race team.
It features a carbon fiber frame in the same Solarbeam Yellow and black scheme that’s becoming the signature of the AMG GT S, with 29-inch carbon fiber wheels and full off-road suspension.
The handlebars are carbon fiber too, an attached to them is a Shimano XTR electronic-shifting system, which is supposed to make changing gears faster and smoother than a conventional system.
For stopping, there’s the impressively-named Formula AMG R1 Racing FCS front disc brake, which Rotwild says its one of the lights disc brakes for bicycles on the market.
The Rotwild GT S Inspired by AMG goes on sale in May, but only 100 examples will be produced.
They’ll be priced at 9,990 euros each. That’s about $10,960. which is a lot less than a real AMG GT S, but probably still enough to buy a used C-Class.
For that price, buyers also get a number of accessories, including a case for the bike itself, a tool kit, and a suspension set-up pump, all in the same yellow-and-black color scheme.
This isn’t the first AMG GT S tie-in product, but it takes up a lot less space than the last one.
As part of its ongoing relationship with Cigarette Racing, Mercedes unveiled a boat inspired by its new sports car earlier this year.
Called the 50 Marauder GT S Concept, the boat is 50 feet long and packs two Mercury Racing V8 engines, each with 1,550 horsepower.