Driven #33:- Mercedes-Benz AMG SLS, Part Two

Fast forward a week. The Glastonbury Festival has been and gone, I have had this years fill of being at one with the trees and the animals, I've let the beat control my body and drank Whiskey from the Jar. It's back to work with a thud and, on my second day back, it was time to make a second 30 mile journey in the SLS.

For whatever reason, when I first drove the SLS I was interested, above all, in finding out what it meant. The ethos of the car, the reasoning behind it, the theory of where it fits into the great scheme of things, all somehow seemed more important than the actual machine itself. Today, for another 30 miles, I am free to concentrate on what it is, rather than why it is.

Whether it ends up as a footnote in history or an important step in automotive evolution, whether SLS's end up used every day or locked away in dusty vaults with Monets and Picassos. The car's worth as an artistic installation is in no doubt whatsoever, but it still remains to be seen whether it lives up to those attention grabbing looks. 

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Driven #33:- Mercedes-Benz AMG SLS, Part One

So, 49 years after the original Mercedes-Benz decided to recapture some of the drama of their original Gullwing, the 300SL.

Of course, the SL has moved on, or rather regressed a long way since the W198 of the ‘50s. At that point the fuel-injected, 150 mph beast was straight out of the annals of science fiction; a costly, hi-tech wonder far beyond the reach of mortal man. But soon, time and progress did their inevitable dance. Mercedes had to broaden the appeal of their flagship, so it got gradually bigger and more practical. And as it got bigger, it required more power. The engines offered on subsequent SLs rose in size through 350, 380, 420, 450, 500 and 560 in R107 shape, which didn’t really have any pretence of sportiness left at all, then up to 600 in the far more on-message R129 of the 'nineties.

Today, the R230 model is far closer to the sporting ideal of the W198, but the 300SL is right down at the bottom of the range, struggling to crack sixty in much less than eight seconds. So, rightly, the new Gullwing has a new name. They call it SLS, and it’s  Mercedes’ signature dish. This is everything the three-pointed-star knows about building a fast car.

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