Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale North American debut at Monterey Car Week

Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale made its North American debut at Monterey Car Week 2025, highlighting Italian design, craftsmanship and performance in a limited 33-unit run.

Mercedes-AMG has once again shown that the word “record” is deeply embedded in its DNA. On the high-speed test track in Nardò, the experimental electric car CONCEPT AMG GT XX circled the equivalent of the Earth’s equator in just over a week, setting a series of achievements that only a few years ago seemed impossible for battery-powered vehicles.

The headline result was a distance of 40,075 kilometers, completed in 7 days, 13 hours and 24 minutes. That figure exactly matches the Earth’s circumference. The engineers’ target had been eight days, but the car finished significantly ahead of schedule. On the 24-hour benchmark run the GT XX managed 5,479 kilometers — over 1,500 kilometers more than the previous electric record. In total, the car secured 25 records, averaging around 300 km/h and stopping only briefly for ultra-fast charging sessions.

The technological foundation was equally striking. The car uses three axial-flux motors from the British specialist YASA (a Mercedes-Benz subsidiary since 2021) combined with a newly developed NCMA battery featuring direct liquid cooling. This setup enabled sustained high speeds and charging powers of up to 850 kW, far beyond today’s infrastructure. For context, Porsche’s Taycan and the Lucid Air peak at roughly 300 kW, while Rimac’s Nevera claims about 500 kW. In the GT XX, five minutes of charging could restore around 400 kilometers of range.

Conditions at Nardò were demanding: ambient temperatures reached 35°C, the track was fully exposed to the sun, and drivers rotated in two-hour stints. The line-up included GT specialists as well as Formula 1 driver George Russell, underlining the project’s sporting character.

For Mercedes, this record is part of a long tradition. In the 1970s and 1980s, experimental Mercedes C111 prototypes set dozens of benchmarks at Nardò, from diesel endurance runs to top speeds above 400 km/h. The GT XX now carries this spirit into the electric era.

When compared with combustion-engine endurance records, there is still ground to cover: Volkswagen’s W12 prototype reached nearly 7,741 kilometers in 24 hours back in 2002. Yet within the electric world, AMG’s breakthrough stands as a defining moment. More importantly, the effort was not just for headlines — it served to validate the upcoming AMG.EA architecture, scheduled for series production in 2026.

Against the backdrop of Mercedes-Benz’s strategy to increase electrification through the 2030s, projects like this act as both a showcase of technical capability and a confirmation of long-term sustainability goals. In the past the company set records with diesel and petrol prototypes; today it does so with a fully electric flagship.