SPY PICS: Mercedes-Benz SLC

This is literally like a shell game. Mercedes-Benz and partner in grime AMG have built a new sports car that is not a replacement for the SL and, we trust, not a new or smaller SLR.

Our overtime-accruing spy photographers at Carparazzi staked out this test mule for twelve hours before availing themselves of the opportunity to get it on film.

According to Carparazzi, the blokes driving and testing the vehicle were employed by AMG and this fits with the news back in July that MB and McLaren would not persist with development of a new sports car that would be smaller than the SLR.

Instead, MB and AMG would work together on an altogether different sports car design -- the vehicle shown in these pics.

AMG in turn, sub-contracted the car-building work to their DTM partner, HWA Racing. DTM is the German touring car championship and HWA is named after the company founder, Hans-Werner Aufrecht -- himself a co-founder of AMG. HWA Racing is MB's official racing team.

So with all this political stuff out of the way, now we get to the real shell game; the car itself.

Body panels are sourced from the Dodge Viper and Benz/AMG deviously left the 'Dodge' legend in the rear bumper on view, to fool those ubiquitous spy snappers. It certainly looks like a new generation of Dodge Viper, but according to Carparazzi, it isn't based on the Viper floorpan, even though that car would have yielded a ready-made platform for a new car -- before the recent split-up between the Chrysler Group and Benz.

We still think this might be based on the Viper platform and the Dodge panels are there to lead the ingénues to think it's really the next generation of Viper or lead the wary to think it's a Mercedes-Benz disguised as a Dodge. Being the conspiracy lovers that we are, we think it's a Dodge, built as a Mercedes, disguised as a Dodge...

Disclaimer: Carparazzi advise that the SLC is built on a different wheelbase than the Viper's.

-- with Carparazzi