Past Master
Few supercars are quite as monstrous as the Mercedes-benz SL65 AMG Black Series. Alex Robbins tries to tame the beast
Merc SL65 AMG Black Series revisited
The Black Series smacks you round the chops with its looks and presence
Autocar is not a magazine in which swear words are, generally, allowed to make it past the subeditor’s desk. Therefore, I’ll have to leave to your imagination the words that fly through my head (not to mention out of my mouth) upon my first sight of the Mercedes SL65 AMG Black Series.
We’re in the pit lane at Silverstone, with just 15 minutes or so of track time to get to grips with one of the most outlandish cars that Mercedesamg has ever come up with. Mercedes has specified that the traction control must stay resolutely on, too – although in a car like this, even with this circuit’s vast run-offs, that’s probably not such a bad thing.
Fortunately, it doesn’t take long to work out what the Black Series is all about: relentless, sense-bashing forward motion. Floor it hamfootedly, and even with those vast rear tyres, on a dry track, the back end tries to squirm sideways before the traction control thumps in. Wait for it to release you, and the SL takes off, its thudding soundtrack overlaid with whistles and whooshes from the turbochargers.
The five-speed automatic gearbox feels fairly old hat nowadays – its pauses to select a new ratio giving a sense of the big Merc drawing breath before its next onslaught of power and noise – but it does the job. Indeed, the vast torque of the Black Series ruled out the use of a more up-to-date transmission.
Handling? Well, it’s rather secondary to the whole experience. The weight of the SL is always a factor, whether it’s in the form of the stiff ride that – to its credit – cuts out all but the slightest body roll, or the tendency for the nose to want to push wide as you ease into the throttle. Gun it too harshly or too quickly, though, and, of course, the tail starts to come into play; in this instance, with the result of a dramatic throttle cut and the concerted flashing of the traction control light.
It’s not quite a hot rod – make no mistake: the Black Series will corner mighty quickly if you’re good enough to find the fine line between understeer and oversteer – but its forte really is straightline speed, where it delivers, unremittingly and continually, the sort of acceleration that befits its looks. It would be wrong to call it explosive because it’s really more of a balls-out, rocket-sled punch in the back, which it’s happy to repeat time and again.
Honed and incisive it is not – but then, did you really think it was going to be, with that bodykit? No, the Black Series smacks you round the chops with its looks and presence, then with its noise, and then again, one last time, with the way it gets down the road.
It might have been conceived as a track-oriented special – to which its bucket seat and stripped-out carbonfibre door panels attest – but the SL isn’t the kind of car that’ll give you satisfaction from acing each corner, clipping each apex just so and eking out a few more tenths of a second. Instead, the pleasure of the Mercedes comes from its drama; from the brutal and allencompassing way it makes you giggle like a small child whether you’re driving it or looking at it. That is, of course, when you’re not busy exclaiming those unmentionable phrases we talked about earlier.