2022 Mercedes-AMG SL55 review: First drive

Everyone loved the new SL at first sight. Gary the God-botherer and graffiti artist in his ramshackle caravan perched on a hill near Desert Shores. The tanned ageless retiree at the wheel of a bleached-black S55.

The poker-faced valet who made the $10 tip disappear with the ease of a seasoned casino croupier. The young surfer dude and his two nymphettes in San Clemente. The highway trooper who flagged us down at 55 in a 55mph zone just because she could.

We also got loads of thumbs-up from hikers and bikers of all ages. The homeless Trumpists at Bombay Beach. Sean the uniformed immigration officer from El Centro near the Mexican border, who knew full well that the gleaming steel blue roadster was not Checo and Conchita’s Trojan horse taxi to the promised land.

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They all fell for a car bound to alter the brand’s long-running glide-and-grunt balance by moving the new ragtop a couple of notches deeper into sports car territory. The R232 was, after all, developed by AMG, not Mercedes-Benz.

It introduces an advanced multi-material architecture which is stiffer and significantly lighter even though the end product is 180 kilograms heavier. Why? Because it comes standard with four-wheel drive, active sway bars, rear-wheel steering and a fancy five-link front suspension.

The test car´s carbon-fibre brakes and 21-inch wheels cost extra. Jochen Hermann, who runs the Affalterbach tech show, describes his latest baby as a much more dynamic proposal which can for the first time challenge the Porsche 911. But can it?

The round rear end certainly pays subtle homage to that other Swabian sports car icon and the performance is on a similar level. The latest SL even gained two token rear seats, but they are better suited for a couple of soft bags than for toddlers.

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Down by the sea in Newport Beach, where roaring Lambos keep racing whirring Teslas between sets of traffic lights on streets paved with gold, the new SL instantly belongs. It looks cool and classy, from some angles even sexy. It radiates the right mix of fresh bling and trad brand identity.

It is without a doubt the latest must-have member of a fast-expanding model family. Here in Rolexdom and Guccitown, this novelty value does not pass unnoticed. At the filling station, people ask questions like,”Is the fabric roof superior to the retractable hardtop?” and, “Has the power output gone up?”

Yes, and yes again. Predictably, no one cares about electrification, fuel consumption or asking price. After all, we’re in Southern California where it never rains except this morning and the day after.

The Pacific coast between Santa Barbara and Dana Point is home to the rich and very rich who seem to work at night so they can spend the day in exercise-and-relax mode. A flawless physique and a spot-on livery are the prime entry tickets to this laissez faire community, so the SL fits perfectly, no questions asked.

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Twenty miles inland however, where scorching heat triumphs almost all year round, the demographic mix changes radically as a handful of landlords command battalions of immigrant farm workers in a much rougher social climate.

On the LA to Phoenix flight path, we join the direttissima to the location of the opening scene of John Krakauer's Into the Wild near Lake Henshaw. From there, the route heads via Borrego Springs to the biologically dead Salton Sea – the largest lake in the State of California - which was generated early last century in the wake of a massive overspill from the Colorado River.

The road that cuts through the Anza Borrego desert is lightly trafficked but in poor condition. Although the Active Ride Control – a combination of steel springs, adaptive dampers and hydraulically-adjustable anti-roll bars – foam-fills the deepest potholes and tames the worst transverse irritations, the droning low-section 20-inch tyres mar the low to mid-speed ride. Apart from the artificially amplified flap-operated sports exhaust, road noise and suspension thump are the only persistent acoustic intrusions.

The soft-top is hush quiet when closed, the wind force tamed by the excellent drag coefficient of 0.31. The Burmester sound system plays an unwavering first fiddle even when the V8 feels like boosting the volume of the back-up choir. Still in the comfort zone, we must also mention the supportive massage seats, the heated door panels and armrests, the standard neck warmers and extensive online connectivity.

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It's the packaging that creates more confusion than consent. After all, the new SL boasts a pair of bonsai rear seats which automatically make the boot volume shrink to 213 litres with the top down. The previous model could swallow a much more useful 485 litres with the roof up.

Marketing tells us that more space behind the front seats topped the owners’ wish-list, so Mercedes duly obliged. Since the S-Class soft-top, the SLK and now also the AMG GT coupé plus roadster have all been discontinued, the SL is the sole remaining high-end open-air Benz.

Its sole future internal rival, the 2023 CLE, replaces the C-Class and E-Class convertibles, is also a 2+2. A slightly narrower, shorter, sportier and even more driver-focused SL might have been a more compelling option.

Two more hours into a murky day, we´re ripping tarmac on the awesome C and D roads which meander from the Santa Rosa to the Vallecito Mountains. While the pale-faced snapper in the passenger seat is fighting nausea, the driver locks in his favourite settings: nine-speed transmission in manual and Sport, Dynamic Select in Race, AMG Dynamics in Pro. ESP remains active but is now on the longest available leash.

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Race activates the fastest shift speed, the quickest steering response front and rear, the tautest damper setting and the most rapid throttle action. Most of the blind corners, crests and dips are third-gear stuff. But when second is mandatory, the short gearing and the high rev level can delay the execution for a couple of awkward moments which leave you with rather a lot of momentum to be swiftly washed away.

Although there are nine ratios to choose from, the wet take-off clutch and the aggressively spaced three bottom gears clearly favour instant low-end acceleration kicks over mighty mid-range punches.

After 360km and the third distance-to-empty warning, we fill her up in the middle of nowhere at a cash-only petrol station and convenience store where Alfredo's yummy chicken burrito easily beats the taco bar at the Parker hotel. Back on the road, this morning´s irritating initial impression is back in fresh force. Case in point is an odd stickiness which ties the steering to the straight-ahead position.

As soon as you consciously wind on a little bit of lock, this chewing-gum effect alerts the front wheels and creates an interdependent yet inconsequential indifference. This lane departure prevention type of robotic double handshake recedes as soon as the turn-in angle increases, and it does not show at all through corners.

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The wider the bend, the more intriguing becomes the interplay of steering, rear-wheel steering, 4Matic Plus and throttle. The combined feedback, the progressively changing torque bias and the momentary brake interaction at the limit are reassuringly 3D haptic and precisely measured. Nice.

Looping through El Centro, cheers and whistles follow the hyperblue Mercedes from turn to turn. Now and then, streetwalkers step forward to offer their wares. At the traffic lights, stooped beggars mingle with wiry dope sellers and juvenile windscreen cleaners – is this where they filmed Soylent Green?

With the exhaust playing King Kong v Godzilla at every blip of the throttle, the SL enjoys playing the head-turning outlander in this grid-pattern arena owned by pneumatic low-riders, tricked-up Mustangs and Camaros and wide-body Japanese boomboxes running on nitro.

Although the 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 fitted to the SL55 AMG musters a relatively unexceptional 351kW (436kW in the SL63), its 700Nm of torque are plenty to complete the 0-62mph sprint in 3.9 seconds. The top speed is an equally adequate 298km/h.

While the completely unelectrified SL55 shows zero ambition to drastically reduce its CO2 footprint, the future plug-in e-performance models will add between 112 and 152 electrically generated kilowatts to the table.

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Within one and the same day, we keep diving into and resurfacing from three different Californian mindsets, not seldom done in rapid succession. Most of the way, young, educated and healthy positive thinkers are in the minority. Instead, the new normal is the hard-hit middle class which is struggling to maintain a standard of living and the matching facade.

Also growing in number is the grey army of disillusioned desperados who ride the downhill spiral to homelessness and addiction. About 160km south of Palm Springs – dreamtown of well-off Boomers who like to go to bed with a large Scotch and their favourite seven iron – we travelled through dilapidated places like Calipatria, Slab City and Bombay Beach, where the dole queues are longer than the Grand Central freight trains calling at toxic lithium mines and mushrooming fertiliser factories.

Deprivation and hopelessness are omni-present in these outcast, skid row dwellings where people live in makeshift houses or forever grounded trailer homes. Most roads that fork off the 23 end in foul-smelling ghettos down by the water. At dusk, the lake radiates an eerie fluorescent blue.

Ten hours after breakfast and five since lunch, the ambitious eye-catcher still leaves no stone unturned to please. Seat massage on? Okay then. Perhaps a coffee break? You can't possibly call this coffee.

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A tourist attraction too good to be missed? Let's check out Salvation Mountain where a small community of dropouts, eternal hippies and nationalist contrarians follow their own rules, jurisdiction and religion.

The Land of the Free stands back with a frown on its face and lets them prevail. We watch and shiver, also because the seat heaters, Airscarf and wind deflector are struggling to keep the crew warm now that the sun has finally set. Closing the soft-top is a two-touch affair that's over and done in 15 seconds at up to 55km/h.

The fabric stack weighs 21kg less than the folding hardtop. Like in the 911, the foremost segment doubles as flush-fitting cover when open. The glass rear window is heated, but the huge three-quarter blind spot needs a seventh sense to avoid disappointment.

In a car that sets out to blend so many different traits, idiosyncrasies are almost forcibly the rule, not the exception. Take, for instance, the controversial hyper-analogue cockpit layout which converts the SL´s centre stack into a Tesla clone.

That upright, XXL tablet-style main monitor looks Walmart generic. It rides on an unnecessarily wide and unpadded transmission tunnel It’s crammed with a host of redundant functions, most of which can be accessed via the overloaded, ultra-sensitive capacitive four-spoke steering-wheel. The large main monitor is electrically adjustable in inclination, but not in reach or tilt.

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Other key elements of this overkill cockpit are the eight different mode-dependent and colour-coded instrument graphics, the rainbow ambient lighting, the busy head-up display, the distracting night-vision feature and the augmented reality sat nav aids which pop up as blue arrows on the big screen at every turn-off point, intersection and roundabout.

Add to this voice and gesture control, the two multifunction rotary knobs on the steering wheel, the glut of MBUX services, the army of assistance systems and connectivity services, and all you wish for is a leave-me-alone button or a reduce-to-the-max filter.

The 111 heading toward Indio is dotted with enough elevation changes, surface variations and different radii to check out how the active aero system, dubbed Airpanel, works. Hidden behind the grille and the lower intake aperture are two sets of selectively blocked horizontal and vertical louvres which control the airflow, thereby reducing drag and front axle lift, or enhancing the cooling performance. The rear spoiler can assume five different positions to maximize the directional stability or to make the car even more slippery above 160km/h.

Last but not least, AMG is offering a lightweight carbon-fibre venturi-effect aero wedge mounted below the front bumper which increases the downforce in two steps. In combination with the stiffer body (the rigidity improvements range from 18 to 40 percent), the re-engineered suspension and the new active engine mounts, the self-adjusting nose cone speeds up the turn-in, consolidates the front tyre grip at high slip angles and takes the sting out of last-minute mid-corner braking manoeuvres.

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There are more and more mental notes piling up on the final approach to Palm Springs, which is SL heartland the way marketing used to know and love it before global warming and Tesla changed the world order. Let's briefly run down the list point by point.

Through the twisties we tackled in early afternoon, it would have been nice to deactivate ASR and ESP separately and in this order, Ferrari-style. Another useful Ferrari inspiration is to engage neutral by pulling both shift paddles simultaneously.

In the SL, coasting is only available in the Eco programme which feels as if the patron saint of the anti-destination league had added half a pint of liquid Valium to the screen washer reservoir. We have yet to unearth the true potential of the Master set-up which can only be activated with ESP off.

None of the minders knew what exactly separates Master from Professional (Advanced and Basic are the remaining two settings of the Performance programme), but there was talk of a particularly loose rear end keen on exercising various drift modes, AMG GT-style.

The cabin ambience at night is vaguely reminiscent of a Manhattan cigar lounge with a Keith Jarrett impersonator at the piano, the whole scene glowing in fifteen different shades of blue. Or red. Or amber.

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The nicely crafted interior certainly looks as digitally advanced as an expensive smartphone, but unless you have a knack for touching, swiping and zooming through life, the software plays coy before revealing its full potential, which includes one of the most sophisticated voice control systems. By the end of the day, the language processor had even learned to decipher my Austro-Bavarian sing-song.

Disappointments? The most blatant anti-climax were the sub-standard US-spec headlights which simply do not compare with the adaptive multi-pixel matrix beams.. In stark contrast, the short light cone of the export version shone unevenly and was blotted with two offside dark patches – another needless step back enforced by the NHTSA.

The very last leg of the 12-hour journey was spent driving in a rush-hour convoy with part-time hair & make-up artists, multitaskers sending and answering text messages, take-away munchers and distracted Netflix streamers glued to their dash-mounted iPads.

Cruise control set at 10mph over the limit, these absent-minded drivers on auto-pilot could not care less about vehicle dynamics, so very few of them objected to a blue convertible speedily threading its way to the head of the centipede, which it never reached.

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When the Palm Springs exit beckoned, it had started raining again, and although the digital speedo showed 49 in a 35mph zone, the lone cop on the prowl could not be bothered to step out of his 25-degree highway patrol car comfort zone.

The final challenge of the day was the owner of a triple-black Lexus LC500 who asked three crucial questions: How much is a fully loaded SL55 AMG? How does it compare? Could the tester be tempted to buy one?

This writer is speculating on a $175,000 price range – but we’ll know for sure when details are announced in the first quarter of 2022.

As far as potent luxury cruisers go, the previous-generation Bentley GTC is perhaps the smarter choice . As open-top sports cars, any Aston, Porsche or Ferrari is the more involving drive. The new SL is more of a highly accomplished middle-ground effort.

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