2012 Mercedes-Benz SLS Reviews

If you fancy a nifty, not-so-thrifty top-down car, this could be the one for you. (If you don’t have a spare $1500 for every 1 km/h of speed you want to squeeze out of a car, look away now.)Top speed is 317km/h. The base model costs a fraction shy of $490,000. But boy, is it fun. Very naughty. But fun. Rocket-like acceleration. The raw figures — from 0-100km/h in 3.8 seconds — don’t do it justice, especially if you have the top down.This is an awesome, fire-breathing dragon, and it sounds like one when you press the ‘start’ button to ignite the engine. Chief engineer Scotty from the Starship Enterprise would struggle to get more warp speed out of this beast. It makes a sweet and deep noise from the exhaust when you floor the accelerator. Three modes of driving — comfort, sport and sport plus. I had it in sport for most of the time. It hares off as if dragged by wild horses. The torpedo-like bonnet is a beauty to behold. Snug and sumptuous inside while still being sporty. Nice brushed metal switches and tactile feel to the leather interior and dashboard.You sit low as if you’re a pilot, in a spacecraft-like cockpit. This car will certainly get you noticed. I attracted an inordinate amount of female attention (and not all down to my stunning good looks). The car’s pulling power had something to do with it.Let’s face it, unless you are a top footballer or a business chief with enough spare wonga to splash out the equivalent of a one-bedroom flat in a desirable suburb, forget it. The base price of this car is $487,500, but there is a long list of extras that can be loaded on to it. AMG ceramic brakes or the AMG Designo metallic silver paint will each set you back close to $30,000, carbon fibre engine cover is $12,600, cabron fibre interior styling package is $11,025..,that's just a taste of the top shelf options.And at 13.3L/100km — and 20L/100km around town — it’s a true gas-guzzler. It certainly awakened the inner ‘flash git’ in me. But it also raises the ire of other drivers. They really don’t like you. Best to wear shades. Amazing how many white-van men and young punks with their seats set low and their baseball hats high want to race you. Get a life. Rise above it. You can’t compete.

I could tell you how fast this car is. I could tell you how loud and brash it is. I could tell you how outrageously expensive it is. But there's so much more to the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Roadster than this. It's one of those rare cars that is more than the sum total of its parts. There's an aura, a certain mystique about it that elevates the SLS to the very top of the supercar wish list. It's enough to leave a grown man weak in the knees. One thing's for sure, it's a better looker than the Gullwing. I tell you ... you'd mortgage the house to own a car like this.It has a deep, guttural booming engine note, that is even more apparent in the roadster without any roof to mask it. For this reason alone, you'd leave the top down, even in the dead of winter. Start it up, rev it a couple of times and heads whip around up to half a kilometre away. Off throttle it pops, and crackles and carries on just like an F1 racer, blipping the throttle for you on downchanges.It's the same naturally aspirated 6.2-litre V8 engine as the Gullwing, mid-mounted with 420kW of power and 650Nm of torque. It's essentially the same engine as the C63 AMG, but with about 120 different parts and a much higher power output (the C is good for 336kW and 600Nm). These two cars are the last models to employ this engine. When they move to the next generation models we'll see a switch to the turbocharged 5.5-litre V8.Withering. 0-100km/k takes a blistering 3.8 seconds and it has a top speed of 317km/h. There's no difference between the way the coupe and the roadster go, although the roadster weighs another 40kg.In a word  stunning. It's incredibly broad and muscular, filling the road with its riveting road presence. Punch the accelerator and thing roars to life, cannoning forward with a power and grace bellying its 1660kg.The original Gullwing dates back to the 1950s. It's one of the most celebrated cars in motoring history. There was a four cylinder version the 190 SL and six cylinder version the 300 SL. When you put the two side by side you can see where the designers of the modern car drew their inspiration, particularly the side vents or "gills" with their twin slashes of chrome.We had a chat with the owner of a beautiful, blue restored 1960 190 SL. Victorian Murray Allen has owned the car 10 years and has spent eight of those years slavishly restoring the car to concourse condition. He wouldn't say how much this show car owes him, but you;d have to guess that it's a bloody lot. What is it about these cars that attract people like Murray? When you pull them apart, it's the high level of engineering set them apart. "There's a bit more guts to them than most other cars,'' he said.Wait for it. $487,500 before onroads, $17,000 more than the Gullwing, but it gets plenty of extra kit thrown in. You can open and close the roof up to a speed of 50km/h. Vision with the roof up is a bit challenged, so Benz has added a reversing camera and blind spot awareness system as standard. The blind spot system flashes and buzzes a warning in your exterior mirror if there is a car near you. It's also thrown in $8000 worth of leather upholstery but that still leaves room for plenty of options, taking it well over the half million mark ... but for the cost of ceramic brakes you could buy one of Benz's new B-Class runarounds.Benz has sold 75 Gullwings so far in Australia so far and is holding 10 orders for the roadster. Five of the Gullwings are going straight into storage and two of the orders for the roadster are from existing Gullwing owners. The car comes complete with a cover and trickle charge battery kit as standard to assist in storage.

You can now put a price on beauty and it is $487,500 for the soft-top Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Roadster.  And this vehicle is no botox and silicon-enhanced average Joe or Jane but a genuine jaw-dropping supercar that looks and sounds better than the Gullwing Coupe that preceded it.The price is stratospheric by mortal standards and pushes the AMG-developed vehicle into the arms of the moneyed elite. I want to be one of them. If my lucky numbers come up, the local Merc dealer is one of the first people I'd be calling, given there's a months-long wait between placing an order and taking delivery.That hasn't deterred 10 customers from pre-ordering a car, including two who already own the Gullwing. Options are few but run from $29,850 for track-focused ceramic brakes, $11,025 for a carbon-fibre interior pack to $3775 for carbon fibre rear mirrors, $4950 for the adaptive suspension damping and $1950 to paint the brake callipers red.The only thing missing is a touch screen - Mercedes has persisted with the button and dial-driven Comand interface but at this price, I'd want the touchy-feely option as well.AMG developed the SLS and the input of those performance purists it is reflected in every aspect of driving the car. This isn't a fettled Mercedes but a ground-up driver's machine. The heart of the beast is the 6.2-litre V8 that spins like a four-cylinder to crank out 420kW/650Nm and give the car 0-100km/h performance of 3.8 seconds. That is quicker than a Ferrari California and not far off the Porche 911 Turbo Cabriolet.Power is sent to the rear wheels  via a seven-speed automated manual transmission mounted in the back and the car is directed into the turns by the most tactile steering wheel I've had the pleasure of laying hands on.This car looks so good with the top down it should be sold in plain paper packaging and come with warning labels. It will stop traffic. It shares its basic structure with the Gullwing but looks even better when the three-layered red/black/beige lid is lowered - a process that takes only 11 seconds and came be accomplished at up to 50km/h.Rear visibility is restricted with the roof down, which is why the blind-spot assist package is standard on the Roadster. And at almost 2m wide, narrow roads will make drivers nervous, especially with oncoming cars.The SLS is five-star rated. The protection starts with a light-but strong alloy spaceframe chassis that prevents body flex and runs through to eight airbags blanketing the cosy cockpit. Software includes adaptive braking with hill-start assist and a three-stage electronic stability control program. There's also a tyre pressure monitoring system and the previously mentioned blind-spot assist so owners aren't fretting about whether a vehicle in the next lane is hidden by the roof.The menacing bellow that reverberates off rock walls, tunnels and nearby buildings is an aural reminder why the Roadster is a better buy than the Gullwing. If I've spend half a million on a car, I want the world to know why. And the SLS delivers that with an exhaust note that ranges from latent threat at idle to a charge-the-enemy bellow as the tachometer nears 7000rpm.The noise is accompanied by acceleration that can't legally be tapped on Australian roads - human reaction time means the speedo is on the far side of 100km/h by the time the driver eases off.  Find a series of bends and this car dances to a beat few drivers can match. The steering comes alive beneath your hands, transmitting every irregularity in the road back through the wheel to engage the driver as few cars can.The brakes are stupendously good and the adaptive dampers will soften the hits in comfort mode or give you a direct connection to the bitumen in the sports settings. The default ESP mode allows just enough play for the rear end to twitch and remind you the right foot application is too heavy for the steering angle. At that point the chassis soaks up a lot of the lack of talent but persist and the dashboard light will start to flicker.

The SLS AMG Roadster is Mercedes-Benz’s new star.The stunning SLS AMG Roadster comes with a five-star price tag but provided an early Christmas present for The Sun Motors Editor Ken Gibson in the UK – if only for a week – and caps an excellent year for Mercedes with their worldwide sales in overdrive.

As controversial as it might sound, we reckon chopping off the Mercedes SLS AMG "Gullwing’’ roof actually improves its looks. Compare the new soft top roadster alongside the Gullwing and you’ll see what we mean. The roadster looks lithe, muscular - a real handsome customer while the Gullwing looks, well, portly.And we are not the only ones who think so given the amount of attention the new SLS roadster garnered at its international launch last week in the South of France. It caused a minor sensation in a region where there are more Ferraris, Lambos and Porsches per square kilometre than anywhere else  "in the world’’ to paraphrase one J Clarkson.Snobby punters from the Riviera actually ran out in front of our red drive car with their phone cameras flashing. "Poor Aussie car punters stop traffic outside the Grand Casino in Monaco.’’ How good it that? Thank you SLS roadster.Having put in some quality time behind the wheel of the new SLS roadster, we had a different perspective from those outside, we could actually feel the thing and explore its vast sporty prowess and that monstrous sound – like a "door slammer’’ drag car on the limit. This was all accentuated on the drive by numerous, long, road tunnels that caused the blatting exhaust to reverberate to the point of pain – good pain.We liked it so much we sought-out said tunnels simply for aural appreciation sessions. Is it the best exhaust note around? Well, the new Lexus LFA is pretty bloody good but in a different way. It’s more your electric high speed machine gun while the SLS roadster is your big cannon. Boom, boom, boom and look out for falling rocks.TECHNOLOGYIt’s exactly the same mechanically as the Gullwing which means a naturally aspirated 6.2-litre petrol V8 kicking out a handy 420kW and 650Nm. Given it weighs 1660kg, the power to weight ratio is rather impressive especially when there’s all that lovely torque providing the thrust.The engine is mounted up front but behind the front axle for better balance. It’s a dry sumper to reduce overall size and allow a low bonnet line. The transmission is a seven-speed dual clutch system mounted transaxle style at the rear of the car with power transmission via a lightweight carbon fibre drive shaft.Performance from this set up is fairly brutal with a 0-100kmh sprint passing in around 3.8 seconds with top whack running to 317kmh. Redline is up around the 7500rpm mark. Benz says the SLS roadster is capable of returning 13.2-litres/100km – perhaps if you drove it with an egg under your foot.You can dial up the dual clutch tranny into one of four modes ranging from C for cruise to Sport plus and there’s a race start function as well if you want to straighten your hair. It blips the throttle on down changes to make you look good.DYNAMICSBuilt around an aluminium space frame, the SLS Roadster is a mere 40kg heavier than the Gullwing and is rock solid roof up or down. Aluminium double wishbone suspension structures are used at all four corners together with a choice of wheels sized 19 inch front and 20-inch rear. Ride is selectable between Comfort, Sport and Sport Plus. All have cause for existence in the SLS because you don’t necessarily want to be in race mode when cruising along the boulevarde.The test car had optional carbon ceramic brakes with six piston front calipers that should be standard on the car but cost an extra 30 grand. They deliver impeccable stopping power without fade – and we tried hard on the sinuous Col de Brouis road up into the Italian Alps.It has super handling characteristics driven in a sporty manner offering extremely high grip levels, fine steering control and those brakes. All this is aided and abetted by the width of the thing – it’s really wide and has suitable wide rubber to match. Heck we even drove the SLS roadster in cruise mode and that was fun too – comfy, smooth, composed.FEATURESSLS roadster is jammed with all manner of goodies from the Benz inventory – Command this, Active that, Integrated the other – what you’d expect in a car that will hover around the half million dollar mark when it arrives soon.Buyers have a wide selection of choices with which to "customise" their SLS roadster right down to the type and colour of upholstery. They are essentially hand made cars – bespoke to use a current (hated) buzzword.There’s a virtual read out meter displaying important information like lap times, power output, lateral forces, linear acceleration and other engine data – just like HSV. And yes, you can download the data onto a USB to take to dinner parties for some chest pounding. You can go on the internet if you have to – in the car, and crank up the audio system to head bending levels.The multi-layer soft top is totally wind and water proof and deploys in 11 seconds up to a speed of 50km/h. The cockpit style dash has everything at your fingertips and large gear change paddles on the wheel.DRIVINGObviously, not too shabby – awesome is more like it. The SLS has a number of brilliant attributes including the engine sound and performance – beyond a legendary "muscle car,"  the way it handles and how it looks. Then you look at the luxury kit and it’s just so opulent there’s too much to mention. You could spend hours in the garage playing with all the features. Many settings are saveable to a default mode so you don’t have to re-set it everything whenever you drive.Few cars will stay with the SLS in performance and handling terms and even fewer have the brutal charm of the beast. It’s bad to the bone – in the nicest possible way. Sprinting through a mountain pass is breathtaking, so is burbling through the city streets like a wild animal ready to pounce – while you luxuriate in the cars prodigious luxury.But the cabin is smallish restricting seat back angle and its low making access a flop rather than anything more graceful. There’s plenty of headroom with the roof on. We could get used to the SLS roadster because it is such an over the top sports car – bigger and better than just about anything else.VERDICTHuge money, huge tax component, huge fun, huge performance. Sexy looks, likes a drink. Yep, we’d have one in a heartbeat.