Car Spaces

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At the Geneva auto show, Mercedes-Benz officials were stressing the company’s green aspirations ad nauseam—and then rolled out the latest AMG model, the 518-hp SL63 AMG. With a 6.2-liter V-8 engine underhood, this car is about as green as your average logging company.

The SL63 replaces the SL55 AMG, which was powered by a supercharged 5.4-liter V-8 that produced a mere 510 horsepower. The new car features face-lifted styling and interior revisions, plus a modified version of the company’s seven-speed transmission.

The SL63 certainly looks the part. The exterior changes that have been applied to all SL models make the car look more contemporary. The SL63 adds an aggressive front fascia and side skirts to signal its more sporting mien, plus standard 19-inch wheels and tires. Inside, there’s a special AMG steering wheel, gauge cluster, and shift lever to accompany other SL revisions that include an iPod interface and a Bluetooth phone hookup that both work pretty seamlessly.

Sophisticated Transmission

The most interesting feature of the car, however, is buried from view. Mercedes has decided to mate its conventional seven-speed planetary gearset with a multiplate wet clutch (instead of the usual torque converter) to make the closest thing Mercedes has to an automated manual gearbox. Whereas BMW and Audi have gone the twin-clutch, twin-shaft gearbox route, the AMG engineers cite weight as one reason for their solution. A twin-clutch gearbox that could handle the SL63’s 465 pound-feet of torque would weigh at least 44 more pounds. The fact that Mercedes already builds its own planetary gearsets must have factored in, too.

The transmission has five modes, selected by a rotary dial next to the shift lever: standard (comfort); sport; sport plus; manual; and a launch-control function. The sport and sport-plus modes produce progressively faster shifts and heavier doses of revs while downshifting. The manual setting is self-explanatory, allowing the driver control of the ratios via the shift lever or the steering-wheel-mounted paddles.

As with the previous SL55, Mercedes offers a Performance package that features more aggressive tuning of the active-body-control (ABC) suspension system; a torque-sensing limited-slip differential; and bigger front brake rotors, up in diameter from an already monstrous 14.2 inches to 15.4. The package will likely cost about $14,000 on top of a projected base price of $133,000.

Luxury Cruiser and Serious Sports Car

The upshot of all these changes is a pretty special automobile that is both luxury cruiser and serious sports car. Leave the transmission setting alone, the stability control on (there are three modes), and the ABC in its comfort mode, and the SL63 will eat up highway miles quite serenely. The only clue to its more aggressive demeanor is a truly spectacular V-8 engine note that wouldn’t disgrace a NASCAR event. The transmission isn’t quite as smooth as a conventional automatic in town, but it is way better than the sequential manual gearbox in the BMW M6.

Go aggressive on the ABC, transmission, and skid-control settings, and the SL63 is a fast, satisfying back-road car. Nicely weighted, faithful steering is allied to good body control and reasonably neutral chassis balance. On the track, you discover that 4350 pounds of automobile doesn’t respond well to attempts to brake and turn at the same time, when it will plow mightily, but it can be slid around like a much smaller sports car if one is patient on corner entry and uses the prodigious torque to unglue the 285/30 rear tires.

Fitted with the Performance package, the SL becomes something of a track star, thanks to better body control, sharper turn-in, and even more powerful brakes. Using the launch-control function, we predict a 0-to-60-mph sprint of about 4.2 seconds. Top speed is governed to 155 mph—the car gets there with alacrity and a soundtrack that is borderline illegal, along with whip-crack upshifts.

The SL63 isn’t as sporting as a Porsche 911 Turbo cabriolet, but it is a compelling alternative, and it makes one wonder why anyone needs to spend half a million dollars on an SLR McLaren roadster, unless the customer just wants to flaunt the amount of money he or she has. There are some cheap auto insurance around that an insure your Merc without damaging your pocket so subscribe now to our consumer mailing list for the monthly newsletter. When classes are resume, all students are required to finish their major projects for the last semester which includes writing custom essay.

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Mercedes-Benz chose Southern California for the worldwide first-drive program of its freshened 2009 SL-class roadster on account of, we thought, its friendly, relatively predictable March weather and access to fabulous roads. Although the blessed Left Coast location has both of those things, Mercedes attributed its choice of locations to something even more significant, asserting that it was bringing us to the roots of the SL-class. That’s right, Southern California is responsible for the very existence of the SL roadster itself.

Huh? According to Mercedes-Benz, in the SL’s not-so-humble beginnings—the storied 300SL Gullwing—there was little or no initial consideration for doing a roadster version. The butterfly doors on the coupe were designed to make the big two-seater accessible in tight European quarters, and without a roof, there would be no place to mount them. But according to the “legend,” California’s rich and famous—who didn’t share European space constraints, nor did they care much about Europeans, for that matter—clamored enough to make a case for a roadster version. The result was a beautifully proportioned instant classic.

Surprised? Just take a look around Los Angeles and you won’t be. There are more SLs on the road in Southern California, we’d guess, than anywhere else in the world. And so we set off feeling right at home as we got our first taste of the 2009 SL-class. The fact that it was a perfect sunny day in March and we were enjoying California’s trademark fabulous roads was icing on the cake.

Just as the Rich Get Richer, the Stylish Get More Stylish

Just as the wealthy always seem to find more money in their accounts after making withdrawals, style builds on style when it comes to their rides. The SL’s midcycle enhancement, then, brings with it a few effective styling changes, headlined by a new single-bar grille that evokes most of its SL forebears, flanked by L-shaped headlamps that evoke none of them. But they do tie the SL nicely to the CLS-classfour-door coupe-sedan thing and likely many sporting Mercedes-Benz models to come. To us, the lights look a bit discordant, primarily due to the rearmost edge having the same roundness as the previous SL’s now-dated peanut lights, no doubt to keep Mercedes from having to develop new fender stampings.

The fenders themselves on the SL550 and SL600 incorporate modified gill-type air outlets behind the front wheels and bracket a redesigned hood with two stupidly named “power domes,” which, in fact, are neither domes nor anything that gives the car more power (for the real power story in the SL lineup, look no further than our drive of the new SL63 AMG, with its naturally aspirated 518-hp, 6.2-liter V-8—and no power domes). Other modifications found on the SL lineup include larger side mirrors with curious arrow-shaped turn signals and, in the case of the SL550 and SL600, a faux air “diffuser” and trapezoidal exhaust tips at the rear.

In all, we’d say the changes are successful in adding presence and a sportier overall look to the car. Whether it’s more attractive is up to the beholder, we suppose. All we can say at this point is that, unlike the previous model, it now looks really good in red. More important, from Rodeo Drive to Indian Canyon Boulevard in Palm Springs, everyone seemed to notice that we were driving new Benzes.

New Steering Wheel, New Steering Sensations

A sporty new three-spoke steering wheel is the most dramatic change made to the SL’s interior. The only other changes of note are the mildly revised instrument cluster, a more logical COMAND infotainment system, and the newly available three-speed Airscarf system that blows warm air onto your neck. But it’s what you feel through the steering wheel, we’d say, that is more important.

The previous steering rack has been replaced by a new variable-ratio system that is a touch slow immediately off-center but gets really serious, really soon as the wheel turns toward 90 degrees. Seldom in our winding mountain driving experience—over the gorgeous Angeles Crest Highway toward Palmdale, back around Mount Waterman and down toward Palm Springs, with a stretch along the 6000-foot-high Rim-of-the-World Highway—did we have to feed the wheel from hand to hand in corners. Although feel and feedback are far from Porsche-like, both characteristics can be considered excellent and perfectly suitable for a sporting six-figure luxury-touring roadster.

Want a bit of oversteer? Simply stab the gas—particularly with the stability control (ESP) off—and the big roadster’s tail comes around quickly and predictably, making us feel perhaps a bit more confident on our drive than we should have given the narrow roads, often with steep drop-offs on one side and hungry-looking trees on the other. As ever, ABC (active body control) does a remarkable job of keeping body roll completely snuffed while soaking up all but the most torrid impacts; between the air springs and the solid construction inherent to all recent SLs, we noticed only a few jolts during our entire stint behind the wheels of both SL550 and SL600 models—impacts that probably would have caused much more of a disturbance to lesser cars and their occupants.

The SL’s brakes, however, felt a touch artificial as the hypersensitive anti-lock system constantly fiddled with the brake pressure at each wheel, especially when trail-braking into corners or on rough patches. This was most apparent in the SL550, whose 13.8-inch-front and 12.6-inch-rear rotors are each 0.4 inch smaller than those of the marginally heavier SL600. Still, both systems proved completely fade-resistant and more than capable of yanking the big two-seater abruptly down in speed.

Mercedes’ first SUV, the ML320, arrived to fanfare in 1997. But timid performance and shaky quality gave it a reputation as a minivan posing as a Mercedes.The new ML, however, with its strong stance, well-appointed cabin and sophisticated engines and transmission, is a bona fide Benz. The SUV has been stretched and widened, gaining passenger and cargo space. The new 3.5-liter V-6 delivers stronger acceleration than before yet boosts fuel economy by 1 to 2 mpg. The V-8 ML 500 is even quicker but kicks the base price past $50,000.