Soft top McLaren two months away
Mercedes-Benz announces mega high performance convertible will go on sale in SeptemberLooking as vicious as a barbed spearhead crossed with something Wile E. Coyote might have purchased from Acme Explosives, the SLR McLaren Roadster is the very antithesis of subtlety.
In fact, look up 'subtlety' in any dictionary and it will show a picture of the superfast soft top under the antonym section of the entry.
OK, maybe not. But the convertible version of the SLR McLaren (more here) is a beauty and offers the same mind-numbing performance as the coupe version on which it's based.
That's 460kW of power and 780Nm for a top speed of 332km/h and 0-100km/h time of just 3.8 secs. All this output is the work of the AMG V8 compressor engine with supercharger, driving through a five-speed automatic transmission to the rear wheels.
In spite of the folding roof, Mercedes-Benz claims the Roadster offers the same levels of torsional rigidity as the coupe version. As for the coupe, the Roadster's carbonfibre-reinforced plastic body and aluminium alloy engine cradles contribute to the strength, light weight and passive safety of the car.
Further passive safety gains are made through reinforcing the 'A' pillars with steel and fitting two fixed roll-over bars behind the seats.
The SLR McLaren Roadster, which is built at the dedicated McLaren facility in the UK, has already made its motor sport debut at Goodwood (more here) and Mercedes-Benz will begin customer deliveries of the car in September
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