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Kraftwagen König
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Andrew Frankel
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Last summer, Mercedes introduced the first of its Black Series products, designed to be among the most hardcore cars on the road, with a single-minded approach to the provision of raw speed.
The first car to receive the Black Series treatment was the SLK, and if it wasn’t the worst car I drove all year, it was certainly the most disappointing. It was quick, but its handling was awful, its automatic transmission had an unrivalled ability to know which gear you wanted and ensure you never got it, and its ride was so bad it would have been funny, had it not hurt quite so much. And unlike every other SLK ever made, it wasn’t even a convertible.
So, to say hopes were not high as this CLK Black Series rumbled up to my house, is an understatement. Unlike the SLK, which in all forms other than the Black Series is a distinctly likeable product, I couldn’t claim even to like the raw material upon which it was based. The CLK is old and has been a perennial class underachiever, and on the basis of the SLK I couldn’t see how the Black treatment was going to do anything to improve it. And I could see no way how its £99,517 list price – a £33,200 rise over a standard CLK 63 AMG – could possibly be justified.
So I climbed aboard with low expectations, even though its swollen wheelarches and jutting sills and spoilers were reminiscent of the official Formula One safety car that rumbles around at the front of the pack whenever there has been a serious incident or the weather is too bad for racing.
For such a task you need an exceptionally quick car, one that’s fast enough to make F1 cars work sufficiently hard to maintain at least some temperature, and therefore pressure in their tyres. Indeed, the safety car is so fast that in heavy rain it can be quite difficult for the F1 cars to keep up with it if they’re on the wrong tyres.
At the business end of the CLK Black Series sits a 6.2 litre V8 motor giving 507bhp, or 29bhp more than the normal CLK 63, pricing each additional horsepower at more than £1,000. It’s good enough to take this CLK to 62mph in 4.3sec (saving 0.3sec) and on to 186mph, which seems like a huge increase over the 155mph of the CLK 63 only until you realise that both numbers are artificially limited and, if left alone, either one could comfortably crack 200mph.
Don’t go looking inside to see where the money’s been spent, for you’re more likely to notice where it’s been saved – for instance, by the removal of the rear seats. Harder to spot is the fact that the side airbags have gone too.
True, there are pieces of trim made of carbon fibre, there’s a matt finish to the start-stop button, and the AMG bucket seats are upholstered in what Mercedes reassuringly describes as “barely inflammable” nylon velour, but it’s hardly the interior of a 100 grand car.
It may not seem it, but this is in fact all good news. For it means Mercedes has concentrated its efforts in areas you can’t see and won’t notice until the moment you blast it up the road.
You won’t see that the seven-speed gearbox has been reprogrammed to give quicker shifts and has lower gearing to make the acceleration in any given ratio more savage. You’ll need to jack it up before you will see one of the most sophisticated suspension systems ever used on a road car. Instead of the suspension settings being fixed like most normal cars, you can choose your own ride height and damping, just like a purpose-built racing car, so its handling is tailored to your requirements.
Only a tape measure would tell you that the forged aluminium wheels have been pushed out further in those beefed-up wings to maximise grip, and you’ll have to drive it to discover the revised settings for the steering, or the limited-slip differential. Even the brakes, hardly an area of deficiency for any AMG car, have been improved.
So, all in all, an impressive piece of redesign and reengineering. It sounds wonderful and goes like hell, but there’s also magic in the faithfulness of its responses, the way it flows so effortlessly across even streaming wet and very tricky roads. And that suspension doesn’t just make it handle like no other CLK on sale, it rides better too.
This, then, is a car you could use every day, so long as you did not need to put anyone in the back. It is more than sufficiently civilised, quiet and comfortable to put up with long motorway journeys and urban jams with equanimity. It attracts gazes on every street corner, so I guess there will be some appeal there to a certain sort of customer.
For me, it’s the car’s ability to turn from cruiser to bruiser at the first sign of the right kind of road and a flex of a big toe that’s the most appealing thing about it. I can’t recall another car capable of achieving such a complete transformation.
Personally, I’d put the rear seats back, but beyond that, and if you’re not overly self-conscious about the way it looks, there’s precious little to criticise here. What I cannot explain is how its creators can have so comprehensively wrecked the usually lovely SLK while turning the hitherto entirely inferior CLK into one of the most rewarding ways of getting from one place to the next that’s ever been invented.
This, then, is a mass produced Mercedes that creates a sense of occasion you’d more normally expect from a Ferrari or an Aston Martin. All sporting cars should quicken the pulse when you drive them, but this one does it from the moment you wake in the morning and realise it’s out there, waiting for you.
I couldn’t see how any car based on the CLK could ever be worth almost £100,000 until I drove this one, and now I think it may be quite cheap.
Vital statistics
Model Mercedes-Benz CLK Black Series
Engine type 6208cc, eight cylinders
Power/Torque 507bhp @ 6800rpm / 464 lb ft @ 5250rpm
Transmission Seven-speed automatic
Fuel/CO2 18.5mpg (combined cycle) / 369g/km
Performance 0-60mph: 4.3sec / Top speed: 186mph
Price £99,517
Verdict A silk purse from a sow’s ear
