2010 SLS AMG US Spec Road Test: Motor Trend
MAZDA RACEWAY, LAGUNA SECA, Monterey, California: The moment the door arcs skyward, it all makes so much sense. The classic long-nose proportions, those silver strakes along the base of the windshield and behind the front wheels. Of course, there's a familiar three-pointed star on the nose.
But when it starts up with a growl, the world tilts on its axis. The look is pure is Aufrecht and Melcher, but that sound...cherry bomb? Flowmaster?
Then the car pulls away, with AMG test pilot and five-time German Touring Car champion Bernd Schneider behind the wheel, and your ears begin to tell even grander lies to your brain.
Schneider pins the throttle and the sounds waves -- nein, shockwaves -- that emanate from the twin pipes immediately end all V-8 musclecar imagery. The throaty, idle wuffle rips into a fast running roar over the rise of turn one -- the revs rising impossibly high for such a large-displacement engine. When he lifts in the braking zone of turn two, a millisecond of silence is immediately shattered by pops and crackles of unburned fuel sizzling in the exhaust system. He cracks off one, two rev-matched downshifts, hits the apex, and then is gone -- taking the car, that sound, and everything you thought you knew about Mercedes-Benz along with it.
It's all very confusing, and only gets worse when he pits a few laps later and it's your turn to run.
It's a lot to take in, this bellowing, bewinged beast -- all snout and tidily truncated tail. They say the SLS' 6.2-liter, 563 horsepower V-8 engine sits behind the midline of the front wheels, but when you stare at all that real estate up front, it just seems ludicrous. There's so much acreage at the prow, what goes there? Another engine? (Actually, the dry-sump oiling system).
She's strangely attractive though, far better looking in person than in photographs. The eyes are wide set, pushed to the corners and separated by a broad mouth, split horizontally by a wing and ring. Back, way back, is the tiny cockpit, inset about a hand's width from the front fenders -- the widest point of the car. A subtle character line runs the length of the car, from the headlights back along the fender, skimming the slender stalks of the side mirrors, before terminating at that small, sumptuously sculpted booty. But enough gawking, how do you get in?
A touch of the key fob ejects a thin handle from the SLS' smooth sides -- a full foot below where you'd normally grab. Lift up, step in, and grasp the interior door handle to close the door as you sit down. It's all very quick and graceful. Sure, there's a sill, but it's low and there's not much of a threshold, so getting seated requires far less contorting than with the original 300SL -- though the whole process is just as much of a show-stopper.
It's roomier inside than expected. You sit low and twin bulges in the roof mean headroom is good even if you're tall. Just don't lean your noggin inboard toward where the door hinges reside.
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From here, the view is enthralling and intimidating. The horizon is yours, literally, as the hood dominates the lower third of your field of view. With the hood's center bulge on one side and a gentle upward fender flare on the other, you have a shallow channel in which to spy the road immediately ahead. Placing the right headlight is more difficult, as you have to look over the bulge across an expanse of metal that just seems to fall away. Provided the pop-up spoiler is down, visibility out back is good, though it's also difficult to judge where it ends. As you discover, it's about yard shorter than expected.
A wide center console separates you from the passenger. All the important controls are here, from the push-button starter to the new T-shaped gear selector, that, like the A/C vents and overall layout of the cabin, is supposed to remind you of jets and fighter pilots. Too bad it's about 50 percent smaller than the thrust control lever found in Maverick's F-14. But enough navel gazing -- they're waving you onto the track.
Push that starter and there it is again, that roar, that coarse, throaty idle. These are not run-of-the-mill Benz noises, not the sound of relentless German efficiency. But then, what did you expect? Perhaps the note of the world's first direct-injection, 3.0-liter inline-six? This ain't 1952. No, these are modern AMG, DTM, *** noises.
Foot on brake, T-selector back to drive, transmission selector to Sport Plus, and you're off. Down into turn two and already you know this is some of the best steering feel of a Mercedes-Benz production car to date, possibly the best of any AMG. It's direct, but natural feeling and moderately weighted -- but not artificially so. What's more, it pairs deliciously with the suspension tuning.
A rigid aluminum space frame and forged control arm suspension -- front and rear -- give the SLS an almost formula-car feel. You can feel the wheels move up and down independent of each other and you're aware of the fantastically stiff chassis.
Front grip is tremendous; right at turn three, again at turn four -- the nose just darts to eat up the apexes. The rear ain't bad either, on the uphill left of turn five, 20-inch-tall, 395/30-profile Continentals serve up wave after wave of torque as the SLS blips through the gears.
Speeds rise with the increasing elevation, and it sounds just glorious; redline is 7200 rpm for this monstrous engine. You're flat out now toward the infamous turn six, hugging the curbing before going hard on the ceramics discs at the second braking cone and dipping low toward rumble strips and hammering up and out at the exit.
It is here that things begin to get dicey. On this uphill section, quickly through the rise at turn seven, the SLS' long and wide nose erodes confidence. You can't see much over it, which is spooky when you're rushing headlong into Laguna's famous corkscrew.
Hard on the brakes again before turning into this famously blind, fall-away left-right combination. Are you in the right place? Looking starboard for the candy-cane stripes, you see only the SLS' hood. You make it through but your knuckles are whiter for it.
Through nine, 10, she goes back to being a legitimate track star. With only about 3500 pounds to carry, and 53 percent of that over the rear wheels, this aluminum-body beauty is easy to chuck and squirt in and out of corners. Hard again on the brakes for turn 11, Laguna's slowest corner, and when you power out, the tail momentarily steps sideways, before the ESP reins it in. Throttle down, and you're thundering down the straight, speedo tickling over 120 mph.
Round and round you go, fiddling with the paddles and transmission modes (C, S, S+, M) to find the best combination for the new seven-speed AMG Speedshift dual-clutch gearbox. After a couple of laps, it's clear this is not the best dual clutch around. Full-throttle upshifts have a satisfying thunk, and rev-matched downshifts send ear hairs quivering, but neither feel as quick as the gear indicator lights claim.
Confidence ebbs and flows. Drive below your limits and she's utterly superb -- willing, thrilling, responsive to every command. At the ragged edge, some of the clarity goes away. She rewards clean, by-the-book driving. Mix it up a bit, and dash lights flash, throttle gets cut, breaking your concentration. Might the SLS be a better road car than race car?
You take an 80-mile loop down to Big Sur to find out. On real roads, all that impresses is magnified, while all that confounds is diminished. The lovely steering is even better on the sweeping seaside curves of Highway 1. The independently articulating suspension adores well-cambered roads and even sends the SLS sailing effortlessly across less than perfect pavement. There's no more fretting about the view either: Only the narrowest and tightest of canyon roads present a problem.
How about that gearbox? Like most modern sports cars that walk the line between high performance and strict emissions regulations, the SLS attempts to get you in the highest gear possible as soon as it can. Loaf around and you can sometimes find yourself in seventh gear at maybe 50 mph. Floor it and the digital gear display drops to third gear in a split second, though the actual gear change and resultant manic surge is delayed a beat later. It's fast enough, but without the impressive immediacy of the dual-clutch transmissions from Porsche, BMW, or Nissan.
The tradeoff is that the SLS is smoother on the street. It is worlds better than the slow-speed herky-jerkiness of BMW's DCT box. Speedshift is far silkier and much less noisy than the GT-R's as well. The closest approximation is Porsche's PDK, but that one feels arguably as smooth at slow speeds and is much quicker when you're really on it. AMG has clearly biased the SLS' dual clutch for everyday driving, which means that while the shifting is not brutally fast, it's smooth enough that you just might forget about the cars track day intentions.
So, no surprise that the SLS AMG makes a better street car. After all, that was the point. AMG and Mercedes-Benz pursued a new level of performance with their latest and greatest, and have largely succeeded. It goes down the track better than just about any three-pointed star that's come before it, yet it's easy and rewarding to drive on the way home.
Riotous exhaust note aside, it all makes so much sense.
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