Mercedes SLS

Mercedes has a brand new super car referred to as the Mercedes SLS. With starting selling prices of approximately one hundred and eighty thousand dollars it's priced to directly compete with all the likes of Porsche, Ferrari and of course Aston Martin. Besides all the usual performance comparisons there's one thing the supercar has and that the others do not - the gull-wing Mercedes is finally back.

Enjoyment: well, there is a 6.2 litre engine located in the front providing a rumble to match anything to come out of Detroit, MI. With over five hundred and fifty hp the Mercedes SLS AMG is an enjoyable drive even if the handling was poor. Thankfully that is definitely not the case. It is agile, poised and although its feels pretty rigid on the roads the actual combination of engine of handling provides a fantastic drive. The Mercedes SLS GT3 - which is the sport version - offers even greater handling.

In terms of functionality the vehicle is a little bit of a mixed bag. Mercedes-Benz has obviously considered how this vehicle is gonna be used and the Mercedes SLS AMG GT3 comes with common functions to offer every day usability like satellite navigation and a decent stereo. However the gull-wings, as iconic as they are, really make it a pain to get inside and outside of the car, make the vehicle really wide and also you really need to stretch to actually pull the doors down when you're inside the car. The car design also means headroom is fairly tight as well.

Then the gearbox is a double clutched affair which works extremely well. There is a slight delay when you flick the paddles yet in general it feels really responsive and sharp. The vehicle is quite obviously rear wheel drive. The seating position is very back and even harks back to old school, honest GT's and combined with the very sharp steering you have total faith in precisely where the front of the car is gonna go. This supercar can easily go round edges very, very fast - in the event you try hard enough you could actually compete with a four-wheel drive 911 Turbo. It is also blazingly fast in a straight line - very remarkable for a quite heavy, front engined Grand Tourer.

Looking at value for cash - can any supercar at this price be regarded as reasonable value? Probably not yet put together with its peers it is well priced. Let us look at it one other way - against the Mercedes SLR, the Mercedes SLS is faster, handles better and is much less expensive to the tune of almost 200,000 dollars.