Every now and then a movie comes along which quite simply blows you away. A Dark Knight was that movie for me. It is a masterful arrangement of celluloid; a symphony of action, suspense, emotion and well, explosions really.
Heath Ledger was remarkable as the joker: he personified evil. His polar opposite is obviously our winged hero, in a thankfully less camp batsuit. And representing both sides in one tormented and twisted character: TwoFace. This poor bugger starts of a charming bastion of all that is saintly until someone really pisses him off, creating the most frightening villain imaginable since Anton Chigur in No Country for Old Men.
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And like Chigur, TwoFace uses a coin to decide his victims’ fate. After all, “in a cruel world, the only morality is chance.”
And that world, in a not too far-fetched way, is world that the Mercedes Benz SL 63 AMG exists in. A world of relentlessly restrictive safety regulations and emissions requirements. A world where the next manufacturer continuously ups the ante in a seemingly endless horsepower war. Someone, or something, was going to snap eventually. And I think it might be this car, with this engine. What an incredible machine. What a vastly overstated show of power. What a magnificent automobile. But is this car a Dark Knight of Power, or a White Knight of Pleasure?
Driving the SL 63 is a bit like going on a night out with both Batman and The Joker. Someone is going to pick a fight, someone is going to get hurt, and at the end of it all someone will go to jail. It’s all fun and games until someone loses their liberty.
The thing is, to even think about driving this car hard you have to have an appetite for drama. And I don’t mean sitting through season 2 of Grey’s Anatomy with your girlfriend. This is more like enjoying a picnic in Baghdad. Outside of the Green Zone.
And its all controlled by the pedal under your right foot. Flooring the accelerator in the SL 63 unleashes a torrent of power and fury with which the rear tyres simply cannot cope. From standstill, nailing the throttle only serves to create an unsettling roar from the exhausts and painful squeals from the tyres. The back end kicks violently as the whole rear of the car fishtails from side to side.
In the blink of an eye the engine, gearbox and traction control systems have held a hearing, and it has been decided that first gear is simply a waste of time and second gear is dispatched to try and sort out the mess.
Second gear engages with a raw mechanical thud and the engine dumps fuel into the exhaust. Suburban-peace-threatening explosions blast from the rear and finally the car is off the mark. Exactly 4 seconds later the needle has skipped over 100km/h and your frightened passenger is fighting to obtain some oxygen. The exhaust note climbs higher and higher, never losing that bass-driven rumble, merely cranking up the volume.
A few seconds later and 200km/h is approaching. This car reaches 200km/h faster than most cars will get to 100. There is merciless power from the engine bay as all 383kW and 720 torques eat through the expensive Michelins. Unlimited, this car will run to well over 300km/h but, in the interests of safety (and avoiding the inside of Pollsmoor) I backed off and settled down to a (relatively) sedate cruise.
Even cruising at 120km/h, a firm kick of the throttle and the whole car squats and leaps forward. The sheer scale of this car’s power reserves is absurd.
The drama of this car is unreal. This is a furious, violent and angry machine; hellbent on scaring it’s occupants and everyone around it half to death. I’ve never sampled a machine so monstrously overpowered, yet so deliciously powerful. And then I discovered the AMG button.
Sitting quietly next to the gearshift is a little black button with the letters AMG in white. Press that button and the car flares its nostrils. The gearbox holds a higher gear and the computer wizards work harder to get you off the line cleanly. The suspension squats and tightens and the whole car comes alive between your fingers. If you thought this car was menacing before, with that button depressed, it simply becomes mechanized evil. A Dark Knight indeed.
Or is it?
The following morning, the sun came out and the fair Cape was very fair indeed. I found myself on the coastal road to Hout Bay. The Harmon Kardon sound system was consummately chanting to the tunes of The Arcade Fire, one of my favourite bands. The multifunction seat was gently massaging my lumbar region. There was a bit of a chill in the air, so I had the seat-warmer on medium and the AirScarf on high, gently whisping warm air against the back of my neck.
I had electronically stowed the roof and I had electronically lifted the wind deflector. I had instructed the centre console to direct a warm breeze over my fingers on the steering wheel and warmer breeze over my toes in the footwell. I had 2 suitcases in the boot which I was delivering to my family and on the passenger seat I had a very comfortable, and very asleep, girlfriend.
All of the above happened in the same car, on the same weekend. How on earth have human engineers achieved this? A car so complete that it can be all things at all times. A car that oozes luxury and character. A car with a useable boot and a folding metal roof. A car that will heat your backside and massage your back, all the while cruising at indecent speeds. A car that will never hit the car in front thanks to ingenious radar-guided cruise control. And car that, when it needs to, will haul all two tonnes of its recycled-Panzerwagon-steel weight around a track in the same time as an Audi R8.
It’s all down to that long, thin, beautifully crafted accelerator pedal. When you use that pedal, you flip the coin. Fortunately though, the boffins at Mercedes Benz have given you a bit more control over how that coin lands.
Ease onto the power and the car is that White Knight: safe, comfortable, beautiful. A shining example of what cars can be, and what cars will be in the years to come.
But stand on that pedal and you place your fate in the hands of an absurdly powerful engine. It becomes the Dark Knight. This car has the power to burn its tyres until they explode. It has the power to reach 140km/h before the next traffic light. It has more power than anyone should ever need or want from a motorcar. And to be honest, I don’t know how anyone could not be corrupted by that.
Thank goodness then, for traction control.
Ciro De Siena
Tags: 383kw, 63, amg, benz, dark, knight, loud, mad, merc, mercedes, noises, roof, sl, video
