German Car Zone

You can't actually see the entrance to the near-vertical corner known as the corkscrew at Laguna Seca Raceway. You just turn in at a given spot, get back on the gas and launch yourself off the edge of the cliff. In any car it's a thrill, but in the SL65 AMG Black Series it's like sitting at the front of a rollercoaster. There's a small pause as the front tips in, then, as the rest of the car does, too, the whole thing accelerates faster due to the mass of the car pushing it down the hill.

It's a hilarious experience, but such twistery doesn't show off this special new 200-mph Merc's huge abilities very well. What the SL65 Black Series is best at is going seriously fast in a seriously straight line. Corners, for all its new chassis tuning, are not its strong point.

The third, limited-production product of the AMG Performance studio, the SL65 Black Series is a seriously reworked version of Beverly Hill's favorite bi-turbo V12 convertible. In its quest to give its customers a car to compete with Ferraris and Lamborghinis, the company has resorted to some deep surgery. You might not notice all of the changes at first, as the car's silhouette is broadly similar, but the whole car is covered in new details, which goes some way to explaining the eye-popping $225,000 price tag.


Full Story: Top Gear - Driven Hard: Mercedes SL65 AMG Black Series


M

$ 225K? where did they get that price? it's almost a bargain