Featured car - Video: arrivin’ in style
Video: arrivin’ in style
How does a NASCAR pace car get to races? On a freakin’ Chinook, that’s how…
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SLS gets extra-retro
American tuning company turns Merc’s gullwing supercar more 1950s. We are not convinced
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Mercedes SL Black: part 1
Jeremy Clarkson reviews the 660bhp Mercedes-Benz SL65 Black Edition
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SLS: can’t quite fly
Then how the hell did the gullwing Merc get onto the roof of the Benz museum?
See the gullwing in the air -
SLS: back in Black?
TG’s favourite Dutch designer-chap dreams up a harder, racier Merc SLS. Do you like it?
See the rendered gullwinged Black Series -
GT5 does Merc SLS
Hot on the heels of that awesome Ferrari 458 vid, Gran Turimso 5 has done the same for the new gullwing Mercedes...
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What’s cool at Frankfurt
The world’s biggest motor show opens its doors tomorrow. Here’s a rundown of all the headline metal
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Return of the Gullwing
Mercedes reveals the retrotastic, 571bhp SLS supercar in all its long-nosed glory
Take a look at Merc's new SLS supercar -
Stig lap: SLR McLaren Stirling Moss
Stig steals the keys to McLaren’s SLR Stirling Moss speedster and heads out for a hot lap
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SLS goes electric
Mercedes confirms all-electric version of its gullwinged supercar. Watch out, Tesla Roadster
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And yet, and yet. For all its too-muchness, for all its bloody-minded, uncompromising bastardishness, there's something magical in the Black. Maybe it shares something with the snow that glints around us in the morning light: uncomfortable, slippery, downright dangerous in parts, but fascinating. You wouldn't want it every day, but you won't forget that one night.
Words: Sam Philip
Photography: John Wycherley -
Rarity alone will ensure the Black's desirability. Just 350 will ever be built, making even the 500-strong Ferrari Enzo look commonplace. Only eight will reach the UK, at a price of £250,000: a frankly insane amount of money, especially when you factor in the cost of employing your own personal weatherman to alert you to the three days a year when it's safe to actually use it.
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The Blackwall Tunnel seems a good place to start. We spear south under the Thames, a thousand rings of dim, flaxy streetlight whipping backwards over the Black’s flanks as it dives deeper below London. There is noise, and that noise is... whistling. The car is whistling. It’s an ominous, unearthly noise, a murderous chorus of Roger Whittakers rising and falling as the turbos suck frozen air through the tunnel’s south entrance and spit it out behind.
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As the Black rolls off the ramps and into London's early evening gloom, the countdown begins. One single night. For all our begging and cajoling, that's all the time Mercedes has given us in the Black. Oh, and if it leaves London, moustachioed German heavies will turn up at Top Gear HQ and murder us in new and interesting ways. The most powerful AMG Merc ever, the SL65 Black, the car christened ‘Der Beast' by its Frankenstein-esque creators, and we're limited to one night in the most congested, cramped city in Europe.
Just to make things interesting, the previous day has seen the heaviest snowfalls in Britain in 20 years. Snow that's freezing rapidly to sheet ice on the roads, making 670bhp and rear-wheel drive look a tad suicidal. Still, one night. The clock is ticking. Let's head underground.
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