Driving around with the wind ruffling your hair is a fine feeling for sure, and the new Mercedes-Benz SLK is darn good at making you feel great about yourself. But this little beauty will take even greater pleasure knowing it won this coveted award by batting off the challenge from the new BMW 6 Series, and that’s no mean feat.
The Bimmer is a heck of a good car and doesn’t suffer those problems you usually associate with convertibles. It’s as stiff as the coupé and has more than enough go to match the show. But the SLK manages the same thing for far less money, and this is the key. OK, so it may not have seats in the back, but the Bimmer’s rear bench is so squashed, it’s almost pointless.
When the opportunity to drive the new SLK presented itself, I had my reservations about jumping into the driver’s seat. First of all, I didn’t think I was in touch with my feminine side to do the car justice. Or so I thought… No, I did not have any sort of physical ‘change’ but this Merc sure has. It’s totally transformed from those girly car beginnings to what is now a proper,
all-out sportscar.
It’s taken 15 years to get to where it’s at, but it has been worth the wait because the new SLK is simply sublime. You can put to bed those unfair criticisms that it isn’t brutal enough or that it only appeals to certain kinds of people (male cabin crew). It now has a much wider target audience but with a rip-roaring ride, it’ll finally have sportscar enthusiasts grinning from ear to ear.
But way before you bury the throttle, you’ll be blown away by its toughened-up new look. Using our best car of last year, the SLS AMG, as inspiration, the results have been nothing short of outstanding. The nose looks like it was chopped off from the gullwing beauty and glued on to the baby Benz. It may seem a little ill-fitting but it’s a massive improvement over the outgoing model.
And with a superb new 3.5-litre V6 under the long, sloping bonnet mated to a seven-speed auto producing 306bhp and 370Nm of torque, the SLK hits 0-100kph in just 5.6 seconds. It provides a truly engaging drive and boasts stellar build quality. Choosing this over the 6 Series wasn’t easy (we suffered countless sleepless nights). The Bimmer ran it really close but in the end, it was those SLS looks, and the price, that won us over.
