We drive Mercedes’ compact roadster in its most powerful AMG guise. Big V8, no blowers and a folding roof: is it the recipe for perfect top-down motoring?
Story: Jim Gorde
Photography: Sanjay Raikar
Admit it. There’s something about a sports convertible that manages to tingle a nerve or tickle a bone in everyone out there. It’s just how they are, to begin with. The low, wide and sleek form never fails to invite a glance from the uninitiated and the enthusiast alike. So when it’s a hot, new Mercedes, complete with an AMG badge, it simply has an unmistakable aura of its own; one which connects to your inner child racing driver.
The new SLK ─ short for Sport, Licht, Kurz (or sport, light, short in English) ─ is exactly that, and the 55 only makes your eyes wider. There are no turbochargers or superchargers to inflate its designation, just a big 5.5-litre naturally aspirated V8 and a lot of horses. The sleek lines, compact size and curvy haunches give it a look which suggests it’s always raring to just go and hit the open roads. So you see what all the excitement is about, then?
The SLK was always beautiful, and in its latest iteration, the R172, it loses the swoopy SLR- and F1-style nose in favour of a rather large grille, which, as usual, houses a big, chromed three-pointed star. The bonnet is quite long up front and also very wide ─ accommodating the big V8 length-wise requires every inch of space under there. The rest of the car is pretty compact, or pretty and compact; whichever way you would have it. The body simply ends there, with the wrap-around tail-lamp clusters containing the somewhat ample rear end and 335-litre boot, which, with the roof tucked in, turns into 225 litres and a dazzling display of glass.
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