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Mercedes-AMG SL63 review: is the 577bhp V8 drop-top 2023’s most confusing car?
£169,305 when new
SL63 – that’s the fastest Mercedes-AMG SL you can get, right?
For now, yes: this £173,000, 577bhp-strong V8 is the flagship. There’s talk of it being usurped by a hybrid version soon, lifting output beyond a dizzy 800bhp.
I wouldn’t bother, if I was working at AMG. Partly because more power is not something the hugely fast SL needs, but mostly because my resources would be better spent defining what exactly the new SL is trying to be. No-one at TopGear.com is quite sure.
A super-GT luxury sports car, right?
For a few decades, the SL’s been a cruiser. A boulevarding, origami-roofed golf chariot – and that’s fine. It knew its audience, played the hits, and everyone went home happy in their plaid trousers. The AMG’d 63 versions had a naughtier edge to them – and would slay tyres like Affalterbach’s best if poked – but they weren’t pointy, aggressive sports cars. An SL was a pleasure yacht, not a jet-ski, if you catch my drift. Check out this review of the old SL63 from 2016. That was a car that knew its role in life.
That was back when AMG had to schport-ify the SL after Mercedes had finished designed it. Now the whole car is AMG’s own work. It shares a fresh platform with the incoming AMG GT, the bulky folding metal roof is gone, and well, just look at it. Hunkered down on its 21-inch wheels, toothy face snarling with menace. Shock, horror: the boot’s a tad pinched for golf clubs. The tone is set for a very different kind of Sport-Leicht.
Wait, are those back seats?
Not ones a human could realistically sit in. But it is odd: Mercedes has very deliberately tried to morph the SL into an unapologetic sports car, then stuffed in token rear chairs.
The front thrones still massage your knotty back as you rumble about, while wafting comforting warm air around the nape of your neck. So there are still hints that this car is a big woolly jumper, for people who like wearing big woolly jumpers.
However. No-one over the age of 15 has a cat in hell’s chance of operating the SL’s disastrously unhelpful interior. It’s like a greatest hits compilation of everything we detest about modern car cabins. Fiddly touch-sensitive pads on the quad-spoke steering wheel? Check. All major functions entrusted to a fingerprint-smeared touchscreen? Oh yes. More ambient lighting options than helpful features? Ja.
The very fact Mercedes has motorised the touchscreen to change angle depending on sun glare should’ve hinted to headquarters they were engineering their way out of a design dead end. The screen gets worryingly hot even on a brisk winter’s day – those processors are working really quite hard to do the job a button would be better at.
Then there’s the driver’s instrument screen. Eight different displays to choose from. Above, seven varieties of head-up display. It’s bafflingly complicated and – criminally – makes the SL feel cheap inside. Instead of knurled metal switchgear, it’s red-hot pixels.
Even popping the roof down is accomplished by operating a ‘slide to unlock’ style gimmick in the touchscreen. If your hand is momentarily deflected as you drive along, the roof operation stalls. After two days I accidentally discovered you can double-press-and-hold the roof button to move the roof. Does the 11.9-inch screen find space to tell you this hack? It does not.
How Mercedes-Benz – the one-time standard-bearers for all that was tasteful and sensible – got themselves into such a mess with tech-obsessed design is anyone’s guess. An irrational desperation to copy Tesla, perhaps? Either way, the minimalist purge of common sense inside comes close to ruining the SL.
Be fair – all this tech is found in an S-Class as well. And you like the S-Class.
Indeed, but an S-Class is an easy-going deluxe barge. The SL63 is a missile. When you’ve got almost 600bhp and 600lb ft of torque on tap, Ferrari-quick steering in your hands and an alarmingly firm ride under your bum, it’d be nice to feel like the interior hadn’t been set up like an escape room, brimming with puzzles, calculated frustrations and devious dead-ends.
Read More https://www.topgear.com/car-reviews/mercedes-benz/sl-class/sl-63-4matic-premium-plus-2dr-auto/first-drive
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