Words by Nick Hendrix
You know you’ve become more of a grownup when you’re on your way to a stag do, and your principle feeling is the warm anticipation of spending quality time with some of your oldest friends – rather than fear for your poor liver and the 12 pints of cheap lager it’ll be forced to process, whilst you’re chased through a field hungover to hell under the loose premise of ‘going paintballing’.
The former (not the latter, thankfully) happened one cold weekend in February – the last of our gaggle of school friends to tie the knot and therefore possibly the last stag do I’ll go on for some time. The choice to host it in a big country pile on the Dorset coast says one thing to me: Road Trip. Although the weekend away with friends is a wonderful thing for anyone with a toddler at home – a three-hour drive through the British countryside is a real cherry on an already decent cake.
I’ve been longing to get behind the wheel of the new Mercedes Benz SL and this felt like the perfect opportunity. I was offered the SL43 AMG for the dates needed and at first felt a little short-changed as I was craving the top of the range, which in this case would be the SL63, or even at least the SL55 – but as with my initial sentiment, maybe those days are behind me, and a ‘slower’ pace is more apt. Don’t be mistaken, it’s still an AMG after all, so it’ll be fun, but maybe less likely to kill me. Which is always good.
The car arrived and instantly made its mark in a conspicuous bright yellow. Not a choice I’d make if ordering, but you know what? It grew on me. Not enough to choose, but it grew on me. It also grew on every wasp or bee that thought it was a very large flower – this was less ideal. There was something gently juvenile about the outlandish paint job that seemed to tie into the weekend’s sensibility – yes, we are in an aristocratic mansion but we’re still just a bunch of boys messing about like the old days.
I promptly collected one fellow stag-doer who I’d promised a lift to – he was expecting my more sensible electric Audi to collect him so was pleasantly surprised when I roared into the car park of his office. Although I knew this was the 43 and not 63, to the untrained eye this is still a car with great presence and great theatre (paint job aside.) There was a pleasant satisfaction for old friends to reunite in this way – me collecting him at the HQ of his now vast and successful printing company, me in a flash two-seater that (being an actor) all his colleagues just assumed was my car. I enjoyed some of that flattery but less that it rung true to them that I’d chosen such an obnoxious colour. The reactions all round proved the SL has retained the class its become known for; the interior feels lush, the styling dynamic and the chrome AMG exhausts let you enjoy a rumble or two to keep the testosterone tingling.
Departures were a little delayed by trying to figure out how to pack our respective bags into the awkwardly shaped boot – litre capacity is all very well but if access to it requires PhD’s in both Engineering and Tetris, then its futile. There were only two of us and we were packing relatively light. Thankfully the rear two seats (as ever in any 2+2) were heavily utilised to compensate – we hadn’t even done a booze shop yet!
Loaded up we set sail for Dorset – starting with a long and hopefully traffic-free blast down the M3. The SL is meant to be a cruiser, a GT, a comfy two-seater for the discerning weekender wanting the sporty feel but not a roll cage and enduring back problems. So, although less fun for a driver, the motorway romps in a car like this are an important part of the experience. With years of history, it was the perfect environment for a catch up.
Although the dreary February weather meant the roof remained up for most of the time, it didn’t mean claustrophobia, or wind noise. Both of us are six foot plus and we were happily sat, surrounded by quality materials and impressive tech – as we’ve come to expect with Mercedes. As ever the shiny black piano plastic becomes easily covered in fingerprints and dust meaning it’s hard for it to ever stay looking shiny and new, but it’s a small gripe in an otherwise lovely cabin.
The cockpit is dominated by one very large portrait touchscreen (that tilts for some reason I haven’t figured out) – Tesla started this, but its simply the way tech is now, less buttons, more screen. Call me old fashioned but I could do with a few buttons. A few clicks and switches. ‘Antiquarian!’ I hear you cry. ‘Next you’ll be wanting an eight-track…!’ Generally, screens are great – useful for navigation and music but when you decide to put the control for the retractable soft top as a sliding touch-operated function you’ve lost me. This is one of the most annoying pieces of tech on a car of late. (The haptic buttons on Ferrari’s steering wheel coming in second.) When the rain’s coming down, or your trying to demonstrate it to a gaggle of impressed on-lookers and it doesn’t work, half works or gets confused as your finger slips – one is left looking less cool. One ultimately looks like someone who bought a fancy car with no idea how to use it. I’m not one of those people, but a good few times I looked like one.
As the miles rolled by, I began to crave a little more of the AMG in this SL. The reason you buy one of these and not a more sensible convertible is because of its pedigree, its noise, its ability to accelerate in a way that raises the hair on the back of your neck and feels exciting, makes you feel exciting. An AMG badge on any Mercedes is a way for any adult to feel young and dynamic because the 10’s of thousands of pounds that the badge adds means these are reserved for people of a certain age and bank balance. Any AMG SL sails past £100,000 quite easily, with this ‘entry-level’ AMG sitting around £117,000. (You’d get near £200k with the range-topper!) That’s a lot of money.
Thankfully we passed Southampton and Bournemouth and finally left the multiple laned cruise and found Dorset’s winding, breathtaking rural roads. And this is where the car really showed its true colours: the satisfyingly un-digital round dials on the steering wheel were turned through Sport and then to Track – the experience fine-tuned, tightened up and delivering fun and frolics a plenty. However, in a respectable dose. And I think this is where the 43 finds its place as a sportscar for the youthful grown up. It gives you the right amount of fun. The dose you need, not the dose you think you need. How fast is fast enough?
The modest 2 litre in-line four-cylinder engine has a nifty electrified turbocharger that has it’s DNA in the Petronas F1 Team and allows another 14hp which importantly revs so high that it just injects the right amount of turbo without it feeling like a turbo at all. Lag is not a word in the AMG dictionary. This takes us up to 376hp and 480nm or torque – 0-60 is 4.9 seconds. At some point we started to find something with a four at the beginning, not fast enough. I think it’s fast enough.
Lots of lefts and lots of rights later (and lots of top-down laughs) we arrived at the stately Dorset mansion. What occurred over the next three days is probably not for these paragraphs but much like the 43 it was full of fun and thrills but without any hospital visits, criminal proceedings or need for counselling.
With a very late checkout on the Sunday fully enjoyed we began the Tetris level 1000 task or reloading the boot, this time with the added challenge of another passenger. Three adults in an SL? We like a challenge.
After literally wedging said friend in the rear seats, packed in by bags with no real need of a seatbelt we set off. We kept the roof off the whole way home for two reasons: One was that if we put it up I’m not sure he would have fit in and secondly so that his three-day hangover could be washed away by the constant stream of cold February air. Surprisingly at the end his review was that it was surprisingly comfortable, but he’d probably not choose to do it again. It’s not a test other journalists will have carried out, but I like to be thorough.
I left the stylish, satisfactorily fast, comfortable and classy German soft top feeling a genuine pang of ‘I want one of those’. Just not in yellow.
Price: £108,165
All imagery credit: Nick Hendrix
