Mercedes-Benz SLS GT AMG 2013 Review - International

That’s because this is the SLS GT, a harder, angrier and (very slightly) faster version of the SLS, which will launch just in time to be pipped by the ultra low-volume Black Series version of the same car.

Due in Australia around April next year, the SLS GT has a couple of little engineering tricks – the best of which involve making the gearbox actually change gears quicker after you pull on the paddle in the manual mode  - but is largely unchanged.

It’s 20 horsepower richer, a tenth of a second quicker to 100km/h, much faster in its gearshifts and stiffer in the suspension. And you can get this upgrade in both the gullwinged coupe and the more conventional roadster.

In fact, it’s so little changed that AMG struggled to even give us a weight figure for the car…

PRICES AND EQUIPMENT

That’s not quite true, because there are forged alloys that are now painted in matt-black, they’ve painted the brake calipers in red and the headlights are a bit darker to look at.

Not enough? A very subtle GT badge sits alongside the AMG badge on the boot and AMG embosses the GT logo into the Alcantara trim on the head restraints of the car’s two seats. Oh, and there is now Alcantara trim on the steering wheel, where your hands should go.

No word yet, obviously, from Benz on what this will cost in Australia, but if you walk into a German showroom they’ll ask for (cough) €204,680 for a coupe and €213,010 for a Roadster.

MECHANICAL

We can’t stress enough that if you’re expecting some road-going version of the GT3 SLS, think again. Not that much has changed. But enough has changed that even these make a significant difference in character.

The biggest of these isn’t the engine, but the gearbox.

AMG has, for years, eschewed the whole dual-clutch business and instead used what are essentially hybrid transmissions. The seven-speed AMG ‘boxes are heavily reinforced versions of standard Mercedes-Benz torque converter automatics with the torque converter bits taken off and replaced with a computer controlled, manual clutch pack.

It’s a compromised solution that has lead to criticisms of compromised performance, particularly as the cars get faster. The SLS came in for a pasting by owners and critics alike about the time it took for the transmission to react whenever the driver pulled the + paddle in manual mode.

The lion’s share of the improvement in the way the SLS GT behaves is right here; in the way they’ve attacked the problem with a combination of software tweaks and some finer tuning to the clutch pack.

Now, the SLS GT slams up to the next gear in 60 milliseconds, or about half the time it takes a stock SLS to do the same job. Eventually, AMG admits, this upgrade will find its way into the standard car as well.

On the engine front, the only real change is a larger intake manifold, but it’s enough to boost the power out by 15kW to 435kW at 6800rpm, even if the torque level remains unchanged at 650Nm at 4750rpm.

It’s enough to shave a tenth of a second from the sprint to 100km/h (now a 3.7-second exercise) while the 0-200km/h sprint now stands at 11.2 seconds.

Underneath, AMG has given the SLS firmer springs and dampers and, just in case anybody wants to cheat and momentarily forget they’re in a proper mean sportscar, they’ve shorn it of the Comfort mode, too.

That means you get Normal, Sport, Sport + and Manual modes, which cover the suspension, electronic stability control behavior and throttle response. Just in case you miss the point, it runs slivers of rubber on 19-inch wheels at the front and 20-inch wheels at the back.

PACKAGING

That’s because its door sills are 65mm lower, which make it easier to get into and out of. It also has conventional swing-out doors, which are easier to close than the gull wings (even if they don’t make quite the same statement) because half of the drivers still need to lift their bums out of the seats to pull the gullwing doors closed.

There are still the thick A-pillars, which are no different (externally, anyway) whether you have a roof or not, and tall drivers (or those wearing helmets on track days) will notice that there’s a lot more headroom in the Roadster, even with the cloth roof up.

The Roadster is 40kg heavier than the Coupe, but the weight distribution still leaves 53 per cent of the weight over the back axle and the 173-litre boot is only three litres shy of the Gullwing.

ON THE ROAD

Even though the exhaust is unchanged, that absolutely bone-fizzing, deep, rumbling engine note is still one of the first things you notice inside the car. It’s also the first thing you notice when one of them approaches you, too.

The engine barks to life with a rapid rev up to over 3000, then settles in to an idle that is intentionally gruff and even slightly rough, especially if you’re in the Sport or Sport + modes.

You still find yourself sitting deep within the soul of the SLS GT – and the sound track does, indeed, make it feel as though the car has its own character.

The body feels very, very wide and the nose feels a very, very long way away. Every time you point the thing into a smallish hole at low speed, these two notions crop up in your mind. Reversing is much easier, especially in the Roadster.

It takes only the first metres to realise the gearbox has made life easier in carparks. There is none of the jerkiness the SLS’ clutches could deliver when the gearbox was cold. There are no snappy, wobbling shifts from first into second on part throttle and it feels a lot more like a developed unit than it ever did.

But it’s on the road that this upgraded transmission really shines. There’s no Comfort mode attached to it because there’s no longer any real need to soften the impact of its shifts when the car’s just cruising along. Instead, the SLS GT slides through from one gear to the next with just a slight head wobble and gets on with it.

It’s even better in its faster modes. Switch it into either of the S modes and you find a gearbox that wants to pound its way up to high speeds and it snaps through the shifts far cleaner and far sharper. In Manual mode, it even shifts when you want it to, rather than you pulling the + paddle behind the wheel and… then getting the gear you asked for.

If this is the big addition to the SLS fleet, then it’s worth the GT name for this alone. It’s not going to rival the dual-clutch units from Audi R8 or Ferrari’s 458 Italia, but it’s far better than it was.

The extra power, coming in an already-powerful package that carries a bit of weight, is barely noticeable and is more of a headline act than a transforming bit of technology. There was plenty of power before and there is still plenty of power.

There is little doubt the SLS GT is capable of its acceleration claims and it feels about right as a 320km/h car. But the SLS GT isn’t about how fast it is. It needs, after all, only to be fast enough to be credible. More important is how it’s fast.

It’s fast in a heart-wrenching way. It’s fast in a combination of US hot-rod/SEMA engine note and European chassis architecture way that reminds you of the philosophy behind the first AC Cobras. It feels even faster than it is, just because the noise and the vibrations leave no nerve untouched.

You find yourself changing down gears on purpose and with absolutely no need, just so you can run the engine on a light throttle overrun only to hear and smile at the pops and bangs and crackles and burbles. The Italians have the high-pitched thing down pat, but AMG has carved its own sound path and it works.

The thing that hasn’t quite worked is the stiffening of the suspension. Never a gentle ride, the SLS GT has become a very firm car – almost uncomfortably so on broken city streets.

There’s more grip on offer at the extremes of handling, and it has an even greater ability to change its line on the throttle or even to be controllably held in progressive slides, but it’s not as nice to drive every day.

So if it’s an SLS you’ve got your heart set on, maybe you’d be better off waiting until AMG sticks these gearbox upgrades into the standard one. The one with the Comfort setting still in it.

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