Is there a more beautiful open car available anywhere? From its cab-rearwards, long nose fundamentals, to the dual bonnet bulges, meaty wheel/tyre combination and superb detailing, here's one car that you can look at admiringly forever. In our time with the SLK, no one remained untouched by its beauty, by its grace, its holistic elegance and only partly-concealed styling aggression. A touch of retro - chrome-edged, cream-faced gauges - but still as current as a four-year-old design can be: there's even a supercharged 2.3 litre four under the snout! Supercharged? Yep, just what you'd expect from Mercedes - the power to go with that styling...
But - overall - we were disappointed by the SLK. Why? Firstly, the bar's gotta be pretty high when you are talking about a A$101,000 sports car, doesn't it? After all, it's not just a car, but an extravagance. No one buys (or leases) an open car for the sole mundane duties of commuting or shopping. No, a sports car is always about frivolousness, excitement and joy. And, unfortunately, the SLK doesn't have a helluva lot of the latter. Not in the driving, anyway.
A sports car needs to have handling that's intimate, tactile, with subtle nuances and an involvement that takes the driving to another plane. To drive fast becomes a physical and mental exercise of ecstasy and excitement, of utter oneness with the road and the machine. A humble Mazda MX5 does it beautifully; an Alfa Spider - in a slightly different way - is another that seduces and cajoles with sensual road manners.
But the SLK230 is distant, dour, unresponsive - and bland. For a car whose appearance promises everything, it's an utter disappointment. Sure, you can drive fast around corners - with 205 front and 225 rear low profile Pirelli P6000's and a very firmly damped, well tied-down suspension, you'd expect the car to be able to corner hard. And it so does. But it's an action that has little driver involvement. Go fast enough that the tyres start to slide and the fronts will wail, understeer intruding surprisingly early. Boot it and - instead of the rear drifting into gentle oversteer - the traction control system flashes its warning dash triangle and the understeer just gets worse and worse. But you can switch the TCS off, can't you? You can, but you'll be constantly confronted with a painfully bright illuminated warning triangle on the dash - and anyway, the system will still re-assert itself well before the car has a chance of becoming neutral in its power-on attitude.
Now, let's make something very clear. The Mercedes E320 that AutoSpeed previously tested has a traction control system. And we thought that it worked very well. In a large, family sedan, mild TCS-enforced understeer gives a safe, predictable handling behaviour. And the tiny A-Class that we also tested added the amazing Electronic Stability Program to the digital armoury. That's the system that can brake individual wheels to cancel under- and over-steer. And we thought that it was quite fabulous - providing incredible safety in a package that can easily contain lots of people and luggage.
But to apply the same levels of computer intervention to an out-and-out sports car is to take away the fun, the throttle control, the balance - and a lot of the joy.
So perhaps that blown 2295cc DOHC four more than makes up for the handling? Well, not really. The redline of 5750 rpm gives you a clue - this is a low-revving, torquey engine that's ideally suited to an auto trans. In many ways the engine feels like a big, old-fashioned four - it's coarse and rough. There are exhaust resonant booms - especially noticeable with the roof down - and at times these are overlain with a tinny sound coming from somewhere rearwards. At higher revs the (albeit very tight, low kay engine) was loud and sounded strained. It would also only propel the SLK to 100 in about 8.4 seconds. (Well run-in examples are apparently closer to 8 seconds - still pedestrian in this day and age.) A Nissan SR20DET turbo four is sweetness and light in comparison, let alone the refinement of sixes like a Toyota 2JZ- or Nissan RB-anything.
With 142kW at 5300 rpm and 280Nm from 2500 - 4800 rpm, the positive displacement supercharged and intercooled engine sounds like it'd be pretty damn good. But if you like sports car engines - not engines designed to transport heavy goods - it simply isn't. The long travel throttle and unwillingness of the auto to kick down exacerbates the problem. The sort of driver who loves fistfuls of throttle has a good time: the trans kicks back and the torque takes care of the rest. But if you like subtle movements of the right foot giving equally subtle - but responsive - changes in the tractive effort happening at the wheels, don't apply. It ain't gonna happen.
Instead you'll find yourself trundling along at sixty kays in fifth - the standard auto's a 5-speed - with the revs at about 1500, the exhaust booming and you feeling that, somehow, you've selected too high a gear. Move the selector sideways to fourth, and the engine sounds sweeter and is more responsive; move the selector rearwards to third and the car feels much better. Here's one car that an enterprising aftermarket chip salesman could really make a difference to - so long as the chip was for the transmission control.
But no aftermarket dealer is ever going to be able to match that most magical of SLK ingredients - the roof. In a stunning engineering triumph, Mercedes has designed and built a roof that does what so few other open cars can achieve. It's steel, fully-lined, and has a glass rear window. Press the centre console red button, and 30 seconds later the complete roof and window have retracted into the boot. A whine from the rear-mounted electro-hydraulic actuator accompanies the process, an event that has the potential to stop bystanders in their tracks. Those into car technology will peer with wonderment into the mechanism that's exposed mid-event - it's possible to stop the process so that all of the linkages and cables can be examined in lingering detail. During development Mercedes Benz did more than 20,000 cycles of opening and closing that roof, so you just
know that it won't stop working tomorrow...
With the roof in place the car is - for all intents and purposes - a fixed roof coupe. It looks good and has perfect dust, air and water sealing. There are also none of the security problems found in soft-tops - you wanna break in to a soft-top? Select your razor blade, sir...
And with the roof retracted, there's still a competent amount of boot space remaining. While it's not huge - perhaps a few soft bags - the available volume is clearly delineated by a retractable cargo blind, one that actually needs to be in place before the roof will fold back. With the roof closed, luggage space is very substantial. As Mercedes say, there'd be no problem in filling the boot with sufficient to keep two people very comfortable - then arriving at the destination, unloading, and retracting the roof.
The practical luggage accommodation is matched inside the cabin. The very thin leather seats are extraordinarily comfortable - not once in many kilometres did our backpain-prone test crew find complaint. The glovebox (its lid equipped with a gas strut), centre console, door pockets and rear bulkhead pockets all provide space for oddments, while a pull-out coin tray (it's optionally a drinks holder) provides still more storage space. Egress and ingress is easy, and the seats are adjustable for height as well as the normal fore-aft and backrest rake motions. However, one of our testers (163cm tall) found that she had difficulty in comfortably reaching the throttle, even with the seat as far forwards as it would travel. The steering wheel is not adjustable - along with the lack of a CD player, one of a number of odd deficiencies in such an expensive car - but for most (taller) people, a comfortable driving position is easily found.
While it's certainly possible to pick holes in many aspects of the SLK's dynamics, one area beyond reproach are the brakes. As with the other Mercedes models that we have sampled, the brakes are stunning. The big E-style ventilated discs are 288mm in diameter at the front and span 278mm at the back. Meaty front calipers, Brake Assist (it pushes on the pedal when it figures the driver's going for an emergency stop) and ABS give stopping distances that are amazingly short and stable. If you've got a child who plans on chasing a ball out onto the road, tell 'em to do it in front of Mercedes.... About the brakes' only downside is that they shed black dust at a fearsome rate - cleaning the lovely alloys is likely to be a weekly event.
Another area where the engineering development is obvious is the aerodynamics. With the roof open - but the side windows up - it's quite possible to converse in normal tones at 110 km/h. Erect the wind blocker - a fabric mesh that fills the space between the dual roll hoops - and the turbulence in the cabin is lessened further. In fact, during the test period we traversed many a country kilometre, outside elements on intimate - but still friendly - show. Making things even more comfortable, the heater can be set to give different temperatures for the driver and passenger - with this combination of HVAC and aero it's possible to run topless in both extremes of heat and cold.
And one tale of travel is worth mentioning. The day that we picked up the car it was hot, hot, hot - in little ol' Adelaide it was 40 degrees C in the shade. That night the heat stayed oppressive - and we were out in the Merc. Top open but air on high, it was comfortable. In fact, it was more than that; it was bloody brilliant. My partner and I were still cruising at midnight - outside, the ambient was holding 35 degrees! Could there be a better car to traverse the cappuccino sidewalk strips, to cruise slowly up the coast, good stereo pumping, hot night air occasionally wafting in to displace the air-conditioned coolness? I can't think of one.
On that first night we'd found the SLK230's forte....
www.mercedes.com.au
Footnote: The SLK230 will shortly be released in Australia with a 6-speed manual trans, and mid-year the E320's 3.2 litre V6 will be jammed into an auto-only version. Interesting....
|