Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG | PH Legacy
The SLS was the first standalone car produced by AMG. It was also the first Mercedes for the modern age
The clue was there of course, its gullwing doors flamboyantly aloft, that long bonnet stretching far into the distance. The Mercedes SLS AMG was only months old when in October 2010 a new photo sharing app was launched. We didn't know that a decade down the road around an eighth of the global population would be Instagram users, and nor could we have guessed that the platform would not only influence the culture for a generation of young people, but come to define it.
And who could possibly have known that Mercedes-Benz - which at the time was known for its elegant saloon cars with gunsight three-pointed stars on their prow, ruched beige leather and walnut trim inside - would one day become an automotive darling of the Instagram generation?
Now we see that three-pointed star not as a flying emblem mounted aloft, but more often bigger, more prominent, pressed boldly into the centre of the grille and repeated tens of millions of times in little digital boxes on our phones. Mercedes-Benz is all over Instagram. It's splashed across social media like an MP's sex scandal across the red-tops, seemingly the most coveted premium car brand among millennials and Generation Z-ers around the world.
But is it? I did a spot of research to try and back that statement up. As it happens, the most Instagrammed car company of them all is BMW with 46.9m individual tags. Next is Honda, believe it or not, with 34.8m. Mercedes-Benz trails just fractionally behind on 34.6m (if you combine the #mercedes and #mercedesbenz tags, which isn't an exact science because not everybody using the Mercedes hashtag is talking about motor vehicles). Regardless, the Stuttgart marque is well clear of Audi with its 22m mentions, while Porsche, Ferrari and Lamborghini barely top 20m apiece.
BMW leads the way, then, with Mercedes-Benz number two in the premium sector as far as social media zealotry is concerned. But what I, and I suspect many of you, instinctively feel to be true is that Mercedes has the hearts of the Instagram set that posts online to show off: G63s as props outside enormous houses; C63s roasting tyres. How many times have those images been repeated on Instagram?
The point of mentioning all of this is that Mercedes' image has changed almost beyond recognition over the last decade. From where I'm sitting it's become youthful, sporty and cool, whereas one time it was more refined and well-to-do. The golf club car parks have been replaced by football training grounds.
And this is where we come back to the SLS AMG's legacy, because that turnaround has been the result of a two-pronged attack. The first is the company's unprecedented success in Formula 1, its team dominating the latter half of the last decade with six back-to-back drivers' and manufacturers' titles. Who saw that coming in 2010 when in its debut year it finished fourth in the standings? Team principle Toto Wolff said this in a recent interview with Martin Brundle for Sky Sports F1: 'A Mercedes today is perceived as a sporty car - it wasn't 10 years ago. [Mercedes] has become a really cool brand, but I think we have played our part in helping the brand to change its image by being in Formula 1, by being successful.'
So racing doesn't only improve the breed - in the case of Mercedes-Benz, it has rejuvenated it, too. In tandem with that we've witnessed the irresistible rise of its highly 'grammable performance wing, AMG. From 24,200 sales in 2008 the division registered a massive 132,136 sales in 2019, thanks in the most part to a far busier model line-up (now at more than 30 individual models). While AMG has been around and building great cars for a long time, it was in 2010 that the sub-brand really started to rocket, for it was then that AMG launched its first standalone model. The SLS AMG wasn't an adapted Mercedes-Benz like all AMGs had been before, but the division's first solo effort.
The arrival of the SLS was AMG's Definitely Maybe moment; the thing that sent it stratospheric. Apart from having a halo effect on the rest of the AMG line-up and Mercedes-Benz as a whole, it also demonstrated there could be a very high-performance two-seat Mercedes beyond an SL with eight or 12 cylinders, and that, unlike the SLR McLaren, was actually deigned and built in-house. What's more, the sensational Black Series model (unquestionably one of my favourite modern performance cars), which arrived with 631hp in 2012, proved that the Mercedes-Benz badge could bear the weight of a £230,000 price tag in a way the BMW roundel hasn't yet been able to.
The success of the SLS paved the way for a second standalone AMG in its direct successor, the AMG GT. And would it be a stretch to say that without those two models in its catalogue, Mercedes-Benz might not have had the confidence to green-light the £2m, 275-run AMG One hypercar? All of that activity over the past decade or so has done the business for Mercedes-Benz, not least in bringing down the average age of its buyers. The exact details are a closely guarded secret but anecdotally we know it to be true. In the case of the A-class, for instance, the average age of the people who bought it came down by a full ten years when the third-generation model arrived in 2012.
When we talk about a particular car's legacy, it's very easy to default to considerations of a technical sort. New materials, lightweighting, drivetrain innovations and so on. But while the McLaren F1's technological legacy could well be unmatched, the Ford Mustang and VW Beetle have lasting cultural legacies. The Renault Espace, meanwhile, left a very different sort of legacy, for it brought the MPV segment to life.
The SLS AMG can make no such claim. But in doing more than any other Mercedes-Benz model to overhaul the company's image, its legacy isn't much less significant. None of us knew it back in 2010, but this retro-styled supercar with show-stopping gullwing doors - not to mention that spectacular 6.2-litre naturally-aspirated V8 - was a very straightforward clue that Mercedes-Benz wouldn't satisfy itself with golf club captains and wealthy retirees much longer. The SLS AMG arrived just in time to pick up the famous old brand and deftly lower it right onto the curl of the onrushing Instagram wave.
Watch the SLS Black Rise & Drive video here
Then they stopped production and the values have been going up and up. Can’t honestly say I know why though, unless it is the trade trying to push them up. Why would you want to pay more for one of these than and AMG GT? Just for the doors?
Anyhow, I never really enjoyed the rear-end and the media panel straight out of an E-Class isn’t going to stand the test of time either.
Personally this is one of the best articles I've read on here in a while (and I'm here daily). It's a great exposition of how one car and a Formula One dominance story, set off a train of events that a decade later would see Mercedes Benz as the brand of choice for a huge swathe of society it never previously reached.
It's worth remembering that not everyone is an enthusiast, and appreciated pagoda SLs, or the original Gullwing, or the legacy of the S Class, or 90s E Class saloons with "that" engine, or 1990s CL 600s because the Pagani Zonda engine therein lurked etc. Or even more recently the rasp and power of a C63 etc
To a lot of people Mercedes was the brand you buy when you start wearing beige, living at the golf club and doing your shopping during the daytime. The CL and the SL summed that up for me - lovely boulevard cruisers for folk of a certain wealth segment and age .
This article goes a long way to explain how that flipped on its head in a short space of time. Don't see why every article has to be a "spotted" or "shed" to be worthwhile on here.
P.S the SLS AMG is wide, crazily wide for the UK, don't put anything in the boot like shopping unless you want your food cooked before you get home, etc. And yet I still want one. So did many at the time - have never seen a car where almost every multimillionaire car enthusiast or celeb seemed to own one.
I quite like the way the SLS coupe looks, much better than the successor imo. SLS and Z8 would make a nice garage imo - looks wise at least, not sure how good they are to drive, but am sure they will do for a nice Sunday drive in the mountains and the daily slog
But articles like this are misplaced.
I prefer ones that are concise, depicting excellent use of the English language, good technical knowledge, yet full of passion for the romance of driving. There is an article in Car now - one of the features published in 1977. Its about the Ferrari 308. Its not so much that its a "Ferrari" that draws you in. Its the writer's expression of his experience. I invite you to read it.
Articles like the one published in 1977 should be the benchmark by which all other articles car related are judged and those who write for magazines car related would do well to seek their damnest to match.
Often times, and this is not something I see often with Car, but a lot elsewhere, articles are full of b*s
t personifications of cars and 'stories' behind them... This approach is misplaced.Stick to the fact these are machines, and express how wonderful it can be to experience driving them.
Otherwise focus on the humdrum practicalities and so on and so forth when it comes to ordinary cars.
In my eyes, that was a cool looking thing and almost understated. if I had the money, that would be my perfect spec.
However successful it has been, you can't help but feel that with '30 plus' versions, Mercedes has somewhat diluted what the AMG brand originally brought to the party.
In my eyes, that was a cool looking thing and almost understated. if I had the money, that would be my perfect spec.
However successful it has been, you can't help but feel that with '30 plus' versions, Mercedes has somewhat diluted what the AMG brand originally brought to the party.
It was a real experience - a mix of space age and at the same time, tickled the hooligan in me with that engine. I don't miss it but it is correct to say it was the first modern Mercedes-Benz in that even the latest models today share their (essentially updated) architechture with this car.
A flawed gem but an important one as far as development goes at Daimler in my opinion.
It was a real experience - a mix of space age and at the same time, tickled the hooligan in me with that engine. I don't miss it but it is correct to say it was the first modern Mercedes-Benz in that even the latest models today share their (essentially updated) architechture with this car.
A flawed gem but an important one as far as development goes at Daimler in my opinion.
Saw one in the metal in London. It has real presence on the road and I actually prefer the design of this to the GT. It is unique.
I would agree that subjectively its looks are not MB’s finest design, but as a statement of intent from AMG, showcasing their powertrain development capabilities and mixed with a bit of MB heritage (i.e. gullwing doors), it was a very credible launch product.
This ‘statement launch vehicle’ and the AMG brand isn’t for everyone, but it works for me, I now have an SL63 AMG 6.3, enormous fun.
Someone on my street had one for 3 years. I always struggled with the proportions. It has a unresolved first time effort about it. Unless you had a real gull wing fetish, there were simply better other cars around at the time, which probably explains why it wasn't a great sales success.
Subsequent rehabilitation is slightly strange - it's a bit like the z8. Not loved at the time but now held in high esteem.
Managed to purchase a W204 C63 and whilst its not quite the same, still loving the AMG brand 🙂
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