One Night in London with the Mercedes SL65 Black

The moment the Black drops off the ramps and rolls into London’s early-evening murk, the timer starts. One night, and one night only. After all our pleading and bargaining, that’s the sole window Mercedes will allow us with the Black. And if it so much as strays outside London, a squad of moustachioed German heavies will allegedly pay a visit to Top Gear HQ and finish us off in inventive new ways. This is the most potent AMG Mercedes ever built: the SL65 Black, the car its Frankenstein-like makers dubbed “Der Beast”. And our playground is Europe’s most jammed, tightest, most frustrating city.

To make it more sporting, the day before brought Britain’s heaviest snowfall in 20 years. It’s now freezing into smooth sheet ice, which makes 670bhp and rear-wheel drive feel faintly suicidal. But we’ve got one night. The seconds are leaking away. Let’s go underground.

[Inline gallery: themed]

Images: John Wycherley

This feature was first published in Issue 191 of Top Gear magazine (2009)

Into the Blackwall Tunnel: turbos, whistles and speed

The Blackwall Tunnel feels like the right opening move. We lance south beneath the Thames, while a thousand dim, straw-coloured lamps strobe backwards across the Black’s sides as it burrows deeper under London. There’s noise - and the noise is… whistling. The car is whistling. It’s a sinister, not-quite-human sound: a murderous choir of Roger Whittakers rising and dipping as the turbos gulp icy air at the tunnel’s south mouth and fling it out behind.

As the rev counter’s lights flicker, climb and burn red, the Whittaker medley fades. In its place comes raw machinery: twelve cylinders hammering out a metallic, overdriven chant. And pace, too. The speedo’s markings are being erased at an alarming rate as the Black fires out of the tunnel and back into the London night.

“That,” says Dave, “is a proper tool.” We’ll take it as praise. The Black is idling beneath railway arches in Rotherhithe, crackling and coughing while frost - and the local pigeons - settle over South London. The pub around the corner is kicking out, and the Black is instantly gathering onlookers. Dave’s a true East End geezer, the sort you’d swear couldn’t be real. He knows cars - used to “borrow” 911s from the West End, but says he packed it in after yanking a handbrake turn on the Old Kent Road with a dozen police cars in tow. Dave, in short, is on board with the Black.

Design and stance: SL65 Black goes full steroidal

It’s wide. In every sense. The more you stare, the more it appears to expand, as if it’s flexing its anabolically enhanced hips. Look down from the roofline: the upper half of the Black’s outline is familiar SL - compact, tidy, sensible - though the standard folding hard-top has been swapped for a fixed carbon-fibre roof (with an integrated roll cage). But once your gaze reaches the tops of the arches, it turns aggressively unnatural. There’s a full handspan of flare on both sides, like a gym-addicted bulldog stuffed into eighties shoulder pads.

That bulk isn’t just for theatre. The Black’s engineers hacked 250kg - about the same as a pair of sturdy South London publicans - from the SL65’s kerbweight, apparently by repeating a single mantra: “But what if we made it out of carbon fibre instead?” Door panels, splitter, diffuser and much of the cabin are finished in black weave. The seats look like they belong in the Design Museum up the road: stunning, sculpted carbon-fibre buckets, barely an inch thick. Forget tilt adjustment or lumbar support - you’ll sit where you’re placed and you’ll make peace with it.

V12 power: 670bhp, 737lb ft and a wary gearbox

The SL65’s brutal 6.0-litre V12 didn’t escape Dr Frankenblack’s scalpel either. Massive new turbos, bigger air intakes and freer exhausts lift output from 612bhp to 670bhp - a full 53bhp more than the McMerc SLR, and 69bhp more than the Ferrari 599. Torque peaks at 737lb ft (or a satisfyingly neat 1000Nm in metric-speak), then gets clipped by roughly 20 per cent so the SL’s five-speed auto doesn’t turn itself into a cog-strewn cheese twist.

On a warm, lazy day - perhaps on a circuit in the south of France, where Mercedes expects the Black to spend half its life - that would be a glorious weapon to have beneath your right foot. Tonight, it feels more like your toe is caught under the pin of a grenade.

Ice, traction control and London’s industrial badlands

Back into the darkness, and the pin is already out. The rear-left wheel finds a dusting of snow and the Black snaps into a loud, lurid slide across the night. Jesus. Breathe off. Gentle. We’re clear of the tunnels now, leaning on the big V12 across East London’s industrial emptiness. It’s the sort of district estate agents describe as “ripe for regeneration” and Top Gear labels “a bad place to crash a hyper-exclusive supercar”. Or to run out of fuel.

The trip computer flashes 7.8mpg while the tyres scrabble and skate for purchase on ice-glazed roads. One thing is obvious: on frozen, snow-littered tarmac, the Black is a nasty little b*****d you really don’t want to cross. This car belongs in a universe of grip several continents away from where we’re currently driving - somewhere sunny, with wide, tacky surfaces and soft, forgiving verges.

But still: one night. One empty, icy night. Try again. Good grief, it’s fast. Even on these skating-rink roads, Mercedes’s claim of a sub-four second 0-60mph time feels entirely believable. A top speed of 199mph? We’ll accept that on trust, lads.

Traction control stays on. Fully on. Even so, the stability systems leave just enough slack to deliver plenty of organ-shifting terror before the electronics step in to neaten everything up. Slide, catch, slide, catch. Wipe hands on jeans. Offer a thin, frightened joke. Focus. An accidental extra millimetre or two of throttle and the Black cheerfully lunges towards a snowbank. With frozen feet and a frozen mind, that’s not a brilliant development. Best slow it down.

Even at a crawl, the Black feels intensely physical. Every shard of grit - dumped only hours earlier - clacks and pings off the undertray; every lump of compacted snow audibly crunches under the tyres. On full lock between abandoned warehouses, the diff knocks and lurches and the roof creaks with worrying drama. Suspension travel is practically non-existent, so the whole car hops and skitters over dents and potholes.

And yet the Black is oddly puzzling. It’s hard to shake the sense that it hasn’t fully decided what it wants to be. Some parts are as focused and hardcore as it gets: rock-solid springs, savage brakes, a body that feels like it’s carved from one piece. But the five-speed auto - even in full-attack manual mode - comes across as numb and a touch dim-witted by comparison. It’s difficult to picture where you’d actually use the Black: far too loud and far too uncomfortable for a long, loping cross-continent haul, yet too bulky and too missile-like to feel at home on a track.

Rarity will do plenty of the selling. Only 350 will ever be made, which makes even the 500-strong Ferrari Enzo seem almost common. Just eight are destined for the UK, each costing £250,000 - an honestly ridiculous sum, particularly once you account for the cost of hiring your own personal meteorologist to warn you about the three days a year when it’s safe to drive the thing.

And yet, and yet. For all its excess, for all its stubborn, uncompromising b*****dishness, the Black has something close to magic. Maybe it’s akin to the snow glittering around us in the morning light: awkward, slippery, and in places genuinely dangerous - but utterly compelling. You wouldn’t want it every day, but you won’t forget that one night.

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