Why Would You? Mercedes SL

Of course, I can very well understand why you want to by an SL, for some top down boulevard cruising, there’s little better. However this particular SL I cannot understand, can you see why?

Yes the car geeks among you will be able to see that this is not the newer R230 SL, it’s an R129, the most obvious give away being the fabric hood. Although even with that stowed the car looks a little wrong thanks to its less rakish windscreen and more angular doors.

What this car looked like before its conversion.

Now for me, there are so many things wrong with this whole thing that I had to write this little blog about it. We’ll skip past the terrible choice of rims, straight to my first question; does anyone really prefer the look of the newer R230 to the R129? To my eyes the older SL has aged much better. Cleary the owner of this car disagrees with me, and set about making his car look just like the newer model.

While this car is an SL320 the owner presumably decided that that badge didn’t carry enough prestige, deciding to add the badge from an SL 600. I can see the fun in rebadging your BMW 330i as a 316i, and can also see the fun in sticking a V12 badge on a Vauxhall Agila, but trying to convince others your car is higher in the range than it actually is? It’s just a bit sad isn’t it? Then there’s the AMG badge, as far as I know AMG have very little to do with any SL320 or SL600, but the owner decided to stick that badge on anyway. He’s far from the only one, you see plenty of C180 ‘AMG’s and 320d’s with a big stupid M badge on the back, even if you do have an M-sport, it’s not cool!

Our imposter flanked by real SL600s (Which don’t have AMG badges)

This owner went a great deal further than silly badges though. From the pictures this doesn’t look like the work of a man in his shed. The panel gaps are reasonable and the car overall looks as succinct as a R129 pretending to be an R230 could. This clearly cost a great deal of money and the vendor’s claim of £15k’s of work is believable.  Here’s the thing though, A SL320 from 97 can be had for £5.5k, while a 2003 SL600 comes in at £20k. So for £14,500 extra you get yourself the real thing, which means no matter what way you look at it, the guy who paid for this work didn’t get a very good deal.

There’s one other bit of stupidity too, have you ever seen an adult in the back of an SL? I have and it’s looks unpleasant, there’s literally no room behind the front seats. Perhaps in an effort to distract passengers from their discomfort this car has screens in the headrests, let’s hope they’re of an extremely high resolution, as the passenger will be so close they’re likely to be looking at individual pixels. Or maybe they’re there to distract following vehicles from the fact that this supposed SL600 is emitting a sound rather like a straight 6, as opposed to a bi-turbo V12.  Not that the quad exhausts from the SL AMGs will be doing much to assist this deception.

I think you’ll agree this entire car is pretty bizarre, but not as bizarre as the price. £11,999, if you’re interested. For this money you could buy two R129 SL-24 AMGs, or a genuine SL600 R129. If you really like the R230 SL, have no fear, you can obtain the real deal for less money than this copycat, in the form of a 2003 SL350. Just don’t stick AMG badges on it.