Background
The stock Mercedes-Benz SL is never going to earn a place in the motor industry’s hall of fame. It’s too heavy, too slow, and too boring. In short, it’s just too "overweight-German-banker" to interest the likes of you and me.
Well, that was the case until the folk at AMG took one apart and rebuilt it in their own image. The heart of the new beast is a hand-built, supercharged V8 engine. With a capacity of 5.4 litres stoked by an enormous supercharger, it is a monstrous, thunderous, wilfully bonkers piece of silliness that produces 476 bhp and 512 lb/ft of torque. That’s enough to propel the heavyweight SL55 to an artificially limited top speed of 155 mph (the engineers at Mercedes-Benz claim it would have been a genuine 200 mph car if they hadn’t been forced to hobble themselves...) with a sub-five-second 0-62 mph time, which is ridiculously quick for what used to be a boulevard cruiser.
The hydro-electric suspension, dubbed Active Body Control, might be complex, but it gives the SL55 more agility than any car this heavy should have, balancing ride, handling, and the need to renegotiate the laws of physics by the millisecond when pushing on very effectively indeed.
The folding vario-roof is similarly effective, endowing the car with coupé-like civility and rigidity when it’s up, while still offering the full-court convertible experience when it’s down.
Oh, and Jeremy Clarkson bought a new one. Now, no matter what your thoughts about the chap’s personality, political views, and punchiness when he’s hungry, there’s no doubting that he knows his cars, so you can be sure he’s speaking with unparalleled industry experience when he says:
“I’ve swapped the Ferrari for a Mercedes-Benz. The SL AMG is used as a safety car at Formula One Grand Prix, and if you listen carefully when it’s out on the track you can actually hear it. A rumbling baritone backdrop to the tenor and soprano F1 motors. It is a staggering noise, a bellow, the sound of wanton consumption.
“Looks, as ever, figure just as high, but best of all, of course, is that roof. Push a button and 11 seconds later, it’s in the boot.
“So what we have here is a 200 mph automatic coupé. A wind-in-the-hair paddle-shift convertible. A full-on, supercharged Tara Palmer Nascar that, when you’re not in the mood, becomes as quiet and as unobtrusive as Nell McAndrew. And there are so many gadgets the handbook is 539 pages long. Simon Schama got A History of Britain into less than that.”
