AMG GT 43 vs Corvette C8 vs Boxster: Four Doors, an Open Roof, or a V8

What differs	Figure	What kind of number that is
Seats	4 / 2 / 2	GT 43, Boxster, Corvette. The rear doors are the whole argument for the Mercedes.
Engine	I6 / flat-4 / V8	3.0 turbo inline-six in front; 2.0 turbo flat-four behind you; 6.2 V8 behind you, under glass.
Horsepower	362 / 300 / 490	Manufacturers’ figures. The Corvette wins every performance row.
0–60 mph	high 4s / 4.9 s / 2.9 s	A second in hand for the Corvette. Nobody feels it on Mulholland.
Roof	fixed / fabric / panel or hardtop	The Boxster folds in ten seconds; the Corvette comes as a targa coupe or a folding hardtop.
Rate	$229/day	The GT 43, cheapest of the three. Same $750 refundable deposit on all of them.

The only one with a back seat, and the cheapest Mercedes-AMG GT 43, Blue Four doors, four seats, all-wheel drive and a boot that takes real luggage. The one that can be the whole evening rather than one act of it. Dates and rate →

Three cars, three answers to one question

Three cars, a hundred and twenty dollars a day between the cheapest and the dearest, and not one of them a better version of the others. The question is not which is quickest. It is who is coming with you, and whether the roof comes off.

This is the shelf most people arrive at when a Lamborghini is not the brief and a rental-counter convertible is beneath the occasion. It is also the shelf with the worst writing about it, because every listing describes one car in isolation and never says who that car is for. A shopper at this money is not comparing horsepower. They are working out whether four people are going to dinner, whether the point of the day is a canyon road, and whether anyone is going to take a photograph. The whole shelf is sports car rental in Los Angeles, on one page with live dates; these three are the ones the phone calls are about.

The GT 43 is the only one with a back seat

The name causes trouble, so here is what the car actually is. The AMG GT 4-Door is not the two-seat AMG GT with rear seats grafted on — it is a separate model line closely related to the AMG E 63, wearing GT bodywork over an executive-car floorpan, and the 43 is its entry engine: a 3.0-litre turbocharged inline-six with a mild-hybrid starter-generator, driving all four wheels. That paragraph is the whole case for the car.

All-wheel drive and a long wheelbase make it the only one of the three that is genuinely pleasant on a wet December morning on the 405, and the rear doors make it the only one where a second couple is not a logistics problem. It is quick the way a big saloon is quick — a long, quiet shove rather than an event — and it makes a noise on start-up that people in the forecourt turn round for.

Standing next to the Corvette it reads as a serious car rather than a spectacle, and the day that is about being looked at belongs to the Chevrolet. Take the GT 43 when the day has four people in it, when it starts at a hotel and ends at a restaurant, or when the car is transport that also has to make an impression rather than an impression that also has to be transport. The rest of the Mercedes shelf is sorted by the same question.

The Boxster is the one you take for the road, not for the room

The Boxster’s case is a thing tables cannot carry: the steering. A 718 is mid-engined, rear-driven and light, and it does the specific trick of telling you what the front tyres are doing at a speed that will not lose you a licence. On Latigo or Stunt Road that is worth more than two hundred horsepower.

Porsche’s own 718 model overview describes it plainly as the open-top two-seater of the line, sharing the strengths of its fixed-roof sister, the Cayman, which is here too, in blue, for the day the roof was never going to come down. The fabric roof drops in about ten seconds and, unlike the two solutions on the Corvette, takes no boot space with it, because a Boxster has a boot at each end and the roof goes between them.

What you give up: attention. A red Boxster on the coast road looks correct rather than remarkable, and that is precisely why some people choose it. It is the one car here that a passenger notices least and a driver notices most, which is either the point or the problem depending on who is holding the keys. If the car above it is the comparison you actually want, Boxster against 911 has its own page.

The Corvette is the one people photograph

The C8 is the most car-shaped car on this page. Mid-engined V8, glass over the engine, a nose that sits lower than the kerb it is parked against, and about a second in hand over the Boxster to 60 mph. It is the only one of the three that gets talked to at a petrol station. Two seats, like the Boxster, so it solves none of the GT 43’s problem — but it has a boot at each end and it is far more civil in traffic than the shape suggests.

The Corvette comes as a coupe or a convertible, and here the convertible costs no more than the coupe, which is unusual enough that the coupe-versus-convertible decision has its own page and so does the colour. What you give up: subtlety, and about a hundred and twenty dollars a day against the GT 43. On a day that is going to be photographed, that hundred and twenty dollars is the line doing the work.

The 430i, for four seats and an open roof

For an open roof on a sunny Saturday with more than one passenger, there is the BMW 430i Convertible: rear-drive, a fabric roof that folds in seconds, 255 horsepower, four seats — made for the coast road.

For the canyon, the Boxster; for the photograph, the Corvette; for the coast with the roof down and company, the 430i is the easy choice. It is on the convertible car hire in LA page with everything else that opens.

Match the car to the day

The day	The car	Why
Dinner for four, then somewhere else	AMG GT 43	The only one with rear doors. Everything else here seats two.
Client pick-up, then the office	AMG GT 43	Reads as a serious car rather than a rented one, and takes luggage.
Latigo, Stunt Road, Mulholland	Boxster	Mid-engined, light, and talkative at legal speed.
PCH on a clear afternoon	Boxster or Corvette convertible	Roof down either way. The Porsche is the drive; the Chevrolet is the photograph.
A birthday, and being seen	Corvette	Nothing else at this money attracts the same attention.
Content, a car in frame	Corvette coupe	Engine under glass and the mid-engined profile do the work.
Wet week in February	AMG GT 43	All-wheel drive, and a roof that was never going to come off.
Four seats, roof down, the coast	BMW 430i Convertible	A rear-drive open BMW with a fabric roof that folds in seconds.

What it costs, and how it reaches you

All three take the same $750 refundable deposit, back 5–7 business days after the car returns, and the same daily Protection plan, priced per day off the deposit band. Your own full policy works instead, if you have it. The live calendars and rates are on each car’s page and on the sports car rental shelf; if the length of the booking is what you are working out, where the price actually breaks is not the number you expect.

Collection from our lot on Robertson Boulevard is free and delivery to the partner hotels in Beverly Hills is complimentary. Airport delivery is $150 both ways standard, where the car waits in the airport parking structure and you take the shuttle out to it, or $300 both ways VIP, where it is at the terminal when you walk out — half that for one direction.

With a two-seater and bags, take the VIP handover at the terminal; the GT 43’s boot takes the cases either way. Drivers are twenty-one and up with a licence held two years; under twenty-five there is a young-driver fee per day, and on all three it is the lower of the two we charge. Tax, a daily mileage allowance and fuel are the same on all three; the rest is in the terms.