2023 Mercedes-AMG SL 55 4Matic+ review: Seven figures for the road

Well they’ve gone and done it. With the increase in ARF taxes earlier this year, mid and upper-tier luxury car prices in Singapore have really gone through the roof. The Mercedes-AMG SL 55, like the new BMW XM hybrid SUV, have both slammed through the one-million dollar price ceiling.

While seven-digit price tags are the norm for cars from Rolls-Royce, the fact that products from mainline Mercedes and BMW brands have reached this state tells us a lot about the business of selling and taxing cars in Singapore.

Yet, Mercedes-AMG wants you to believe that the SL 55 4Matic+ driven here is no ordinary Mercedes-AMG. It’s the top-spec AMG car of the moment, and its chassis will also form the backbone of the next-generation AMG GT, the brand’s halo car and set for a 2025 launch. The SL name is also a significant one, having been part of the brand’s heritage since 1954 with the famous 300 SL and its gullwing doors.  

Once again it's worth stating that a Mercedes-AMG is in a totally different league as a car that's just badged as a Mercedes-Benz, AMG Line.

The former is a properly serious performance car designed for dynamic driving with a manic engine under the bonnet, while the latter is always just a bog-standard Mercedes-Benz with a bolt-on bodykit and fancy wheels. They just look fancy, but AMG Line parts do not make your Mercedes-Benz a sports car the way a real AMG car always is.

Under the bonnet of the curvaceous SL 55 is 4.0-litre, twin-turbo V8 petrol engine, that in the usual AMG tradition, is signed by the builder who assembled it.

The world may be infatuated with electric vehicles right now and there are plenty of electric cars in the Mercedes-EQ lineup including the very comfortable and terrifyingly fast AMG EQS 53, but the SL 55 is still all about old-school petrol power. There’s 476 horses worth of it from the engine, along with a colossal torque output of 700Nm.

The only reasonable way to put all that power to the ground tidily through road tyres is through four-wheel drive, of which the SL 55 has too.

The other bits of tech worth mentioning include its four-wheel steering system, ride control adaptive suspension system, Airpanel automatic inlet closure, and active aerodynamics.

It’s a big 2+2 roadster, with serviceable rear seats that will seat two passengers up to 1.5-metres tall (i.e. children). In practice, shortish adults will still be able to ride in them, as the legroom is still reasonable and not totally absent like what you would experience in a Porsche 911 coupe.

Mercedes states that it has fitted a folding soft top to the car rather than a metal roof as it represents a substantial weight saving of 21kg, helping to give the car a lower centre of gravity. 

An air neck scarf channels warm air around the front seat passengers when activated, and you can see the fans doing this work inside the vent screens on the seat headrests, but it’s not a feature that will see use in Singapore. 

The interior is all top-spec AMG stuff, with massage seats, a Burmester audio system, and perfect stitching in all directions. A feature that's unique to the SL for now is the electronically tiltable main display screen, designed so that sun glare can be eliminated when driving with the roof down.

Folding the roof, which can be done with the car moving at up to 60km/h, can be done either by a double click followed by holding the button on the centre console, or by sliding and then holding a 'button' on the main touch pad.

Seems like a decent idea in theory, but we found that the screen gets very, very hot in use. It's manageable with the air conditioning running, but with the roof down and the sun shining directly on it, the touch panel gets too hot to handle after 10 minutes or so of exposure.  

There's the by now standard fancy customisable ambient lighting and Mercedes' proprietary automatic seat adjustment that sets it based on your height, but for a million-dollar car, one can’t help but feel a little underwhelmed by the apparent lack of drama to the whole cabin package.

What it lacks in cabin razzmatazz however, it makes up for in its excellent sense of occasion when the car gets driven.

Driving experience

A nine-speed automatic transmission joins the engine to the car's four wheels, but what's different is that rather than using a torque converter to connect the engine to the gearbox, which always results in a small amount of transmission power loss, the SL 55 uses a wet clutch system for a more direct connection.

The only time this is noticeable is when reversing the car, where there's a half-second where the car feels like it's releasing the clutch before it starts moving. Get it going forwards the normal way and the shifts are so quick and smooth that all nine gears seem to blur together into one powerful forward punch. 

The V8 engine's note is purposeful and unmistakable. Toggle the sports exhaust via one of the rotary controls on the steering wheel and it takes on an even angrier growl, sounding like a wolf just before he pounces. 

There are three automated aero assistance systems on the car. While you can deploy the front chin spoiler and rear deck one with switches, the front grille's Airpanel system is entirely automatic.

It consists of two sections that close up the big front air intake with louvres, designed to help push airflow under and around the car to reduce front end lift at high speeds. The upper section opens when the radiators need extra airflow for cooling, and the second, lower one only opens up at higher speeds.

How high? 180km/h high. This means that in this part of the world at least, it can only legally pop open on a closed race track.

Meanwhile, the chin spoiler extends under the car when it exceeds 80km/h, and the rear spoiler will deploy into one of five discrete angles depending on a number of factors including driving speed, steering input, driving mode setting, and suspension movement.

Mercedes-AMG states that the rear spoiler doesn't just pop up for show. It uses AI algorithms to determine if the driver is on the highway, charging down B roads, or driving on a closed racetrack, and sets the wing angle appropriately, that is if the driver has not already manually deployed it.

In our 24 hours with the car, we'll state that we never got the rear spoiler to pop up even at the highest legal highway speed, likely because the car knew it was being driven on a highway and was aiming to optimise straight line efficiency.

Hidden within the AMG performance menus on the centre screen are a bunch of video gamey features. You can time your own 0-100km/h sprint time, ¼ mile dash, braking to 0km/h, and all, complete with an F1 start light style countdown to help you get on your way.

There's also a lap timer app with famous race tracks from around the world already stored in the system, for those time when you want to fly your car to the Nurburgring to drive it. Malaysia's Sepang track is conspicuously missing, however.

Still it's one of those cars that, if you own one, you better know what these squiggles represent, or else don't bother applying.

The car's steering is very accurate across all driving modes, and it has handling capability that's quite supercar-like. In comfort mode the car attempts to hold as high a gear as possible for the longest time, and use the massive torque wave to accelerate.

It may have nine forward gear ratios but the highest one rarely comes into play, unless you're cruising down the Malaysian North-South Highway.

It has an undeniable sense of occasion when it's in motion. It's quick, makes all the right V8 engine noises, and has a dynamic ability that makes it feel like you're connected to it.

The downside is, as you would expect, the fuel economy. You're looking at a practical fuel 15.0l/100km if you chug along conservatively, but you don't drive a car like this to simply cruise along in economy mode all day, every day.  

Conclusion

The SL 55 sits in a very niche space, as you can get the nearly identical SL 43, with a much more efficient 2.0-litre turbo engine, for a lot less money and still have the same style. Its logical competition will come from the range of cars in the Porsche lineup, and for a similar performance you can get a BMW M5 sedan, or even a Mercedes-AMG E 53 with a lot more space and less money. 

Yet, the Mercedes-AMG SL 55 is designed as a very special kind of car, featuring an entirely new platform that is shared with no other car right now, adding to its uniqueness. Like all other cars in this price category, you can further stack options like the Exterior Carbon Package to further enhance its road presence, if you feel like spending extra.

We've been worrying about the demise of ICE performance cars for a few years now but the release of cars like this one makes it clear that the big brands will continue to keep this segment of performance motoring alive.

Mercedes-AMG SL 55 4Matic+

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This article was first published in CarBuyer.