Mercedes SLS AMG review – Beauty in Function

Imagine meeting a famous actress, one who is so unbelievably hot that you sat through her crappy movies just because she is in them. For the sake of visualization let’s pick that actress to be Megan Fox. Now imagine having the opportunity to meet Megan and right away realizing that she is much hotter in real life than she is in pictures.

You compose yourself, keep your cool, and before you know it you’re making small talk. Very small talk, because next thing you know the talk is over and you find yourself gettin’ it on with Megan. At this point it doesn’t matter if you’re a man, woman, gay, straight or other; you are with Megan Fox, and let’s be honest here, no sane human on earth will refuse her. Wham, bam, just like that it’s over. Things get a little cloudy until you find yourself sitting at a bar, smoking a cigarette. Finally calm, you are trying to sort out exactly what the hell has just happened. And that is pretty much how I felt after a quick drive of the Mercedes SLS AMG.

Pull on the little pop-up handle and lift up the door. Place your right foot on the floor board, hold on to the oh-shit bar and swiftly sling your butt into the seat. Reach out with your left hand and pull down the door; there are no automatic door closer thingies that one may expect, so you are going to have to do this manually, just like in the good olde’ days.

The seats are excellent, could use BMW-like thigh extenders but no one will complain. If it wasn’t for the super-long hood the front vision would have been excellent. Side windows are small but surprisingly don’t make you feel claustrophobic or inhibit vision. The steering wheel is perfectly thick with a flat bottom and controls for stuff. In front of you is a clean and logically laid out dash. Mercedes’ COMMAND center appears to be taken right out of the E-class. Supposedly there is a fantastic audio system in this car but I didn’t bother turning it on; windows down, pedal down and off we go.

Push the little lever into D, using the AMG DRIVE UNIT select one of four transmission modes (comfy, faster, fasterer, and manual) and you’re on your way. The rear-mounted transmission is a dual-clutch 7-speed. Usually these transmissions are phenomenal on track and the trade-off is a bit of smoothness around town, but this was by far the smoothest DCT I have driven. The engine is a familiar one; a naturally aspirated 6.2 liter V8 used in other AMG offerings, but here significantly reworked to produce 563 horsepower.

In the C (Controlled Efficiency) setting, the shifts are super smooth and engine is quiet allowing you to pilot the machine through a residential neighborhood while listening to Beethoven and conducting an intriguing conversation about nothing with your passenger. Things get more interesting when you move the knob to one of the S (Sport) settings; shifts get faster, transmission stays in gear longer and the car gets louder. Slowing down produces glorious back-fire-like noises which are loud enough to scare little children and on subsequent down-shifts the computer bleeps the throttle adding to the symphony. By now whoever has not seen the approaching SLS has definitely heard you coming. Glorious indeed, I did not want to stop.

Peel off the body work and the doors off the SLS and what you see is what I consider to be a perfect sports car: naturally aspirated V8 engine located after the front axle and low to the ground. Modern transmission mounted in the rear, long-ish wheelbase and near perfect wheel distribution. Double wish-bone control arms all around with simple coil springs and shock absorbers. All of this mounted to a lightweight, rigid chassis. Sports Car Design 101.

AMG engineers showed a lot of restraint in not creating another Nissan GTR or Porsche 911. Theoretically, there is nothing that is over-done on the SLS and everything serves a purpose. They managed to marry design and engineering in a way reminiscent of cars from decades ago. I like to call it Beauty in Function and it is something that is very seldom seen today.

I love this car. I loved since the first minute I saw it. Reading up on the specs was like finding out that Megan Fox has an undergrad degree from Princeton and an MBA from Wharton. When I drove the SLS I discovered that she also had a personality that one can’t help but love. I must admit that the one feature that I don’t love are the doors, but somehow they belong on this car. The SLS has speed, elegance and maturity, beautifully synthesized into the ultimate Grand Touring automobile. Frankly, comparing it to Megan Fox is doing it a disservice. Excuse me while I get a cigarette.

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Random Notables:

Storage:

• Trunk is small; forget about golf clubs, all you can fit is two small duffle bags for an over-night trip with your significant other.
• Two small cup-holders located next to your elbow; stick with the tall macchiato which you’ll knock over with your elbow anyway.
• Small little cubby next to the shifter holds your phone. Place your sunglasses and keys in either the rear center pouch or the small glove box.
• Slap your iPod into the glove box (remove sunglasses first) where the connector is located.
• There are no door pockets, for obvious reasons.
• The original Gullwing SL had a substantial cargo area behind the seats; not the case here, it’s just a useless shelf. Area is obviously occupied by mechanicals.

Annoyances:

• Pressing the P to shift the transmission into park is annoying; I should be able to just move the shifter. Actually, the whole shifter was bit annoying, it was more like a videogame joystick than a shifter. It was different for the sake of being different.
• The cruise-control stalk is located where the blinker stalk should be, I kept hitting it while trying to signal.
• EVERYONE is looking at you and taking pictures.

Maintenance and Ownership:

The SLS is a limited production vehicle and even though it shares the engine and bunch of other parts with lesser AMG and Mercedes products don’t for a second think that its maintenance costs will be at all reasonable, for instance:

• Expect to spend between $1800 and $2200 for a set of tires. Plus installation, balance and alignment. Call it $3000.
• Due dry-sump oiling system and its extra capacity (over 14 quarts); expect to the price of oil changes to triple over your E63.
• The DCT transmission and transaxle combination in the SLS is the only one of its kind in Mercedes line-up (for now). Expect the replacement of its magical mystery fluid to be substantial.
• Just about all wear and tear items are SLS specific; think shocks, brake pads, wiper blades, etc. and will cost at super high premium.
• Granted you may not own the SLS for a long time, but as with any car serious expense may come once your beautiful SLS is out of warranty. Big ticket items such as the engine and transmission which may need replacement years down the road will be amazingly expensive if not impossible to get.
• Smaller parts that will need attention in the future such as, say, the door gas struts, may too cost as much as a kidney.

Interesting Stuff Only I Care About:

• The reverse light looks like a rain light on an F1 car.
• Two windshield wipers are not mechanically connected to each other; they have individual motors and communicate over a network (what could possibly go wrong there?). Personally, I’d love to see a MB iconic mono-wiper.
• The trunk lid is made of plastic composites and hides antennae for GPS, radios, etc.
• There are no main bearing caps, just one “bedplate” which sandwiches the crankshaft.
• The eight velocity stacks are 11.4” long and 2” in diameter each. I wish they were visible.
• Radiators for engine coolant, oil, power-steering fluid, and A/C are all integrated together. I wonder about the cost of that one part, which was designed to save 9lbs.
• With the hood raised into the Mercedes-famous service position, the top of the hood is about 6’6” off the ground (see pic).
• Sport suspension, probably more track orientated, and ceramic rotors are available. Skip those. Even if you end up taking the SLS to the track, chances are that its performance limits are already far beyond your driving limits.
• The dry-sump oil pump is so awesome that I can’t even explain it. It’s like Chuck Norris of lubricating systems.

Pricing:

• Approximate price is $200,000. Bargain compared to the unloved SLR and just about any Ferrari. But if I was shopping for a high end Grand Touring car, and I didn’t want everyone to look at me, it would be hard to pass up the common SL63 at half the price. Same engine, same features, dated (but still gorgeous) looks, bigger trunk and the roof comes off. Things that make you go hmmm…
• $200,000 also buys you a choice of Aston Martins, but I have been seeing a lot of those lately, and no one can tell the difference between the $120k and a $300k Aston.

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