THE ANCESTORS WOULD APPROVE
A subtle but effective facelift maintains the SL’S pedigree as the quintessential GT
OW do you make a million bucks in motorsport?” goes the joke… “You start off with two million.” Ta-dadish! It’s also a piece of cheeky humour you could apply to the Mercedes-benz SL500. This car will make you R689 375 – not quite a million, but still a serious pile of cash.
That amount, you see, is the difference between the SL500 and its Mercedes-amg SL63 sibling, and makes the former a relative bargain despite its R1,77-million price tag.
The SL500 is one of four derivatives that make up the newly facelifted SL range and, after having driven all the models bar the R3,12-million SL65 at their South African launch, our Brilliant Blue press car with its 4 663 cm3 twinturbo-petrol V8 jumped out as the sweet spot in the line-up. While it may not have the AMG duo’s 400+kilowatts, Gautraintowing torque or Speedshift MCT seven-speed transmission, the SL500 and its 335 kw/700 N.m business card nonetheless provides all the usable motivation you could possibly want in a GT.
Which is what the SL is. Although its agility may surprise you, it’s not a race-bred machine that was designed to attack a mountain pass or be flung side- ways through chicanes – such crassness would not do for this aristocrat. It takes only a quick look back at its ancestry to know this is a true grand tourer – a pedigreed vehicle designed to not only eat the kilometres between your weekly residence and weekend retreat, but to accomplish this in the utmost comfort. And, as our 160 km circular route around Hartbeespoort indicated, it’s in that discipline that the SL500 excels.
Under the bonnet is a tweaked version of the 4,7-litre twin-turbo V8 that now develops 15 more kilowatts than the unit it replaces, albeit with the same torque output. Perhaps more significant than the slight increase in power, though, is the addition of the excellent new 9G-tronic auto transmission that replaces the archaic sevenspeed and which makes for silky smooth gear changes entirely