Car review: Mercedes-Benz SL550
Though the bottom of Mercedes’ hardtop-convertible SL line, the 550 is not by any means bottom-of-the line. The Benz-born cliché of “precision engineering” is fully evident. It drives like a taut wire, one surgically connected to your id. One example: You don’t close the trunk, you push a button and it closes itself.
Our tester was $104,000 (plus tax), so there’s not a luxury option you can imagine that wasn’t built in—it even had a robotic masseuse, like, inside the driver’s seat. You almost forget it’s a convertible with the top up because there’s so little road noise. And, actually, the car’s obsessed-over aerodynamics make it super quiet with the roof stowed, an action that requires a nearly effortless button-push. So how, then, to judge it? To critique such a car is, it seems, simply to nitpick. Good thing we’re not above that. —Thomas Goetz
WIRED Deep, deep luxury. Punch the accelerator to the floor, and you get an idea of what astronauts feel upon liftoff. And there’s no delay (that wire again)—once you command it to go fast, the supercharged V8’s 382-horsepower and 391 lb-ft of torque make you wish you had finished that coffee before getting in the car.
TIRED Speaking of coffee, the flimsy cupholders shouldn’t be repurposed from a Dodge. And that annoying little tic-tic-tic in the armrest compartment really stands out when everything else fits together so well. Reach for the turn signal, and you’ll catch the cruise control lever instead. Automatic trunk is cool at first, but it loses luster: Why make me push a button and wait a full 5 seconds for the trunk to close when I could simply shut it myself in 1 second?
