Mercedes-AMG GT R Nurburgring lap

That noise you can hear is the sound of Porsche engineers choking on their cups of coffee.

German magazine Sport Auto has scored early access to the forthcoming Mercedes-AMG GT R and in the hands of its gun tester Christian Gebhardt it has lapped the Nurburgring in a fairly stunning time of 7min10.92sec.

This puts AMG's new road racer in fourth place on the production car lap record list, behind the Porsche 918 Spyder (6min57sec), Lamborghini Aventador SV (6min59.73sec) and the NISMO GT-R N-Attack (7min08.68sec).

The highest Porsche 911 on the list is the 997 GT2 RS with a 7min18sec lap, but with a new twin-turbo rear-drive monster currently in development, we suspect the development team won't be satisfied until at least a second or two has been shaved from AMG's impressive benchmark.

The GT R is AMG's most extreme production model ever, packing a 430kW/700Nm 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8, carbon body panels, active aerodynamics, rear-wheel steering and a nine-stage traction control system nicked from AMG's GT3 race car.

Set to land in Australia around the middle of 2017 wearing a circa-$400K sticker price, Mercedes' local arm expects high demands for its super coupe. While the GT R is not a limited-edition model, there is the potential for lengthy wait times for those who don't get an order in early.

The scary thing is that the R model won't be as wild as the GT gets, with AMG rumoured to be working on an ever more extreme 'Black Series' model. Bring it on.