Reviews
Gallery 1
Holden used be to pilloried during the 1980s for the seasonal predictability of its Commodore Vacationer specials.
Well, turn your derision to Mercedes this time because that’s exactly what the SLR 722S is – a sticker special to help shift ’em. The SLR was designed to sell 3500 in its life, but fewer than half that have been constructed. In fact, so disdainful were tech-savvy Japanese buyers about the SLR’s lumpy V8 and old-school five-speed auto that only 11 have been sold there.
So the S version is a last resort to shift what’s remaining
Even when you kick off from the carpark, you know you’re going to have to work. The diff chunks its way around tight corners so hard you worry about tyres even before you’ve blazed the boots into smoke. To make that happen, you push the throttle a little harder, only to find the supercharged V8 getting no smoother as the revs rise. Instead, it snarls its way up the rev range and burbles its way back down again.
The acceleration is simply ferocious. It’s loud and hard and it leaps into tomorrow like a rasping, angry, rumbling, maddening bullet.
It’d get blown away by a diesel SUV (it actually did). There’s not a lot more until 3000rpm, when the world explodes into a blur, but it’s not good enough.
It’s damn near frightening. The rear suspension is underdone and, somehow, manages to feel a lot lower-tech than it actually is. The lacklustre ESP means you’ll be relying on the slow steering and the digital brakes to pull things back. The floor-hinged brake pedal commands huge carbon-ceramic anchors, but there’s little modulation in them.
The wonder isn’t that it missed its sales numbers, but that it got as close as half. Honestly, if it’s a big Benz roadster you want, buy an SL63 and, with the enormous difference in price, buy me something nice for saving you.
