Mercedes Benz SL600 V12 drive and review (R129)

you welcome to a car park in the south of France which is not normally where we'd start at Harry's garage special especially with a covered up color but under here is my Mercedes SL 600 and I want to share this moment with you of the actual unveiling the car how it comes about to be here is we're lucky enough to have a boat down here who had been for a few years and along with the having a berth in the marina you get a free car park space but it's always thought to me that I ought to have a car to put in that space it need many excuses to buy another car and the beginning of this year we bought this SL sittin now this car is Satya for two months it just so happens we haven't been out for that long because we've had harvest at home it's been a beautiful summer home but this is the moment where I have fingers crossed that everything is going to work and how it works I have this cover on it all the time but you'll see there's a hole there sort of where the windscreen is and there's a little solar charger in there and if that's been doing its job then it should just start up anyway I'm rehearse let's see what happens I go take the cover off and we'll see if it starter it is cover words really well if you clean the car before you put them on and then nothing gets scratched such as a little bit of dirt on the windscreen but that's just because of the hole for me so the charger on this particular model when you press the remote this should light up so I want to see a green button B that's a good size that means we have some juice left in the battery and now the moment of truth so sage being standing two months see if it starts your pumps do their thing that's one of the reasons why we own this car but I'll give you some more reasons and we walk around the car I'll show you some of the details on it okay I leave it just ticking over see now he hasn't run for the say over two months I think it is just to get some sort of fluid circular I can already feel the air-conditioning pumping a little bit of history behind this car it's a 1993 SL 600 so the very year they came out so over 20 years old it's done 140,000 miles and I bought at the beginning this year having searched for this perfect car to keep down in here and you've got to think of some of the requirements of a car in the South France how we're actually going to use it because French have a sort of robust attitude towards parking much as I'd like to brought by a Ferrari six one two or somebody lovely like that having us out for us I wouldn't like to park it in France so I wanted something we've sort of rubber bumpers and a lip that strip between the doors so it's not going to get bashed up I'm not really going to get attacked when it's in the airport car park for a couple of weeks because we do just abandon this cut in the cuff hug part of the beauty of it had to ever be to what all so that sort of narrows it down as well and of course it had to be cheap this was not a cheap car new though this car in 1993 cost its own ninety six thousand four hundred pounds he might bought a few extras as well I don't know but that was the list price and on sl500 at the time was seventy six thousand four hundred so it's seventy four thousand four hundred pounds so 22 thousand pounds less than the v12 model so you had to be a proper v12 junkie to buy the SL 600 so I have some affinity with the owner of the original owner of this car because he paid a 30% premium but have that v12 badge on his SL it then lived the rest of its way initial life 55,000 miles would have caught into the handbook he'd go through the stamps got beautifully stamped up service history in Rome so he must have had a place out in Rome and this is Zoe charged about between I suppose and rone whatever he was doing in wrote about late nineties it came back to the UK kept around London and the service book goes up to about a hundred thousand miles the last service stamp in there so a pretty good history now we come down to the price I pay for this car I paid five thousand two hundred and fifty pounds for this car which I think it's bordering on a joke for what it offers this was Mercedes flagship the ultimate car in its range it has every extra on it going beautifully engineered and of course it shares its v12 with a car none other than a Pagani Zonda ok it's going to show you the engine and one little trick of this bonnet I love on this age and the stable there is a button here who presses then the bonnet actually goes all the way up you get to that position completely upright it's called the m120 engine is the official designation of this car it's a 6-litre v12 48 vowel and just a spectacular unit rated with sometimes it's rated at four oh eight horsepower sometimes three eight nine depending on which funny book is it's officially 389 horsepower in this particular model but it's super smooth to the eagle-eyed amongst you might have spotted that while this has been running there is a coin balancing on the rock life you have to have a credibly smooth engine to achieve that I'll see if I ready I actually can feel you ready just amazing that it can stay there like that balanced but that is the quality of this v12 you also have to remember that this car is 140,000 miles basically you never lift the bonnet of one of these I've lived with one of these cars before they don't drink oil they don't use any water you don't ever have to lift that until it's a net service again another thing I love about this particular model I can remember actually Mercedes director tena me it was actually the Mercedes most reliable engine for the number of warranty claims about numbers built so I don't know if that's changed but certainly in the mid naughties when I asked the question this was their most reliable engine Mercedes ever built the n120 v12 okay let the first few details on this car I'm going to take it off now fill it up with fuel check the tires and it will take you for a drive people always asked me how to the gallon it does it's basically using it when we cruise down across on the motorways II 90 miles now you can just get at the right side of 20 I know you come down here and then it's the wrong side of 20 to the gallon and we've been as low as 13 to the gallon we're having a bit of fun so in that sort of range now obviously one of the reasons you own an SL is because the roof comes off all electronic on this model all we do is just pull back on this button and as if by magic I remember watching this as a kid in the Motor Show when they showed it the first time in 1989 and it was like the idea to get like here and they've got a sort of piece of furniture a mean bastard raw in and out in and out for the whole Motor Show Mercedes had an SLR 1 to 9 with just the roof coming on and off like that just completely electronically no captures no nothing I adore it that you know 20 years old it's still working although I find on this model if I have dropped the windows or done something sort of out of sequence and then do the roof it can get confusing you have to turn it off reset the windows and then do it again but it's a small price to pay for what is I mean a great convertible we obviously have the draft excluder fitted in this that came it was an optional extra at the time does a brilliant job and we just we just cruise down through France you can still do 155 miles an out if you feel like with the roof off it's you know it's one of those sort of cars the thing only thing I'd say about the soft-top on an SL 500 the r129 is this model was called it's a fairly basic soft top you get plastic rear windows and things and that's because all this model of r129 Mercedes SL came of a hardtop and because you got the hardtop they sort of sacrificed the sort of the extra padding that he might see in some other convertible only type Charles but then the hardtop makes it sort of a coupe a car the one on this car I've got one which is all glass roof and it's a properly huge and sunglasses a proper in a panoramic roof it was a twelve or fourteen thousand pound extra at the time very glad to have that in the garage but down here it's out for us this is how we use it driving in the South France is sort of two sort of road is the beautiful amazing rose in the Alps that we charge up and when we Riva they're just the most wonderful roads up there or if you're down on the Riviera it's all a bit tight or a bit crowded and there's restaurant either side and that's I think where this car sort of scores it's down here cruising around cuz it is silent you cannot believe there's a peak v12 up the front and when you're in this situation we're just coming into veal France here and the sort of restaurant either side the last thing you want is a super noisy car so you can just cruise around this thing and I think we're sort of getting used to the idea of silent cars now for having the appeal of like electric cars because they're completely silent well SL 600 actually got there first genuinely super quiet there's no diesel sort of rattle there's no bleeding hear conversations I feel I have to whisper I'm disturbing people's lunches you just can't believe there's 12 Pistons bouncing up and down at the front I'm doing this car can sort survive between 500 and thousand rpm all day long just got are the only noise is this you can probably hear is just the cobbles that's it you can sort of see why people come down here like the date is 17th of October look at you it's where he says it's 33 degrees oh I don't believe that it's about 24 degrees or something like that Kinnear that diesel shocking shouldn't be allowed floor drive v12 petrol engines the way forward we can hear it now we're going to need a touch a thousand rpm then wonderful part of the world and it'd have to say at moments like this the last thing this feels like is a 5,000 pound it's a very posh it's a glamorous before we brought it down actually there was a few things I did to it because I want it to be super reliable so I took it to the SL shop and they did a full service on it but basically which is changing fluids the only thing they found was we replaced a rear wheel bearing that was potentially on the way out and what else do we do air conditioning compressor had a rebuild and I had it all repressurize all the air conditioning so yeah perfect air conditioning another thing is there's so much electronics on this car but it all works I've got heated seats I've got this amazing climate control I can just set the temperature wherever I want one of the great features don't really use it down here but you get to use is a rest function and with the rest function when you turn the engine off and you're going shopping or something you can still have the car cabin being walled I couldn't believe it that sort of stuff you know all the when I first this first cut the car came out in the 90s what else is there on it other things I like about it when you lock the car in the open position well everything locks all the glove box is locked and the pockets in the door they're locked as well so you can it is completely secure in theory even though there's no roof there's a really nice feature everything is electronic electronic steering adjustment the mirrors not only are they electric either side but this central mirror I do if I put it in the central position then that moves as well it's just it was Mercedes showing off in the mid nineties when they produced this car yes it was a huge price but boy I think it was worth it because it was a mechanical tour-de-force there was nothing else that could touch this in the mid-nineteen I have to think at five grand I'm not sure what else can touch it now anyway we'll get out of here and we'll go out on the open road and show the other side the sort of character of an SL 600 it can be morphed into a different sort of car once you give it the open road and you can use a bit more of that 400 of horsepower the road like this this their cell system is just not really suited to it you can turn the traction control off it's always been quicker than inspect steering's a bit nicer than 107 but it's not it's not a car squirting down this or late very teaching about it five point nine sixty this just the size of that v12 just the thumb constant thump is haider an SL 60 back in the 90s and I lasted a week with it really wasn't that impressed with 12 decision small 12 this surprise warrants okay we're just going to go along the autoroute seeing saw since what this cars liked on then obviously cruise control the rest of it on this car it's so relaxed normal motorway speeds so is a crazy junction here one of the downsides of having a right android car in France do I'm no that's good but we missed the police stop while he get away yeah the funny thing about this car is been in the 90s it's not actually a bigger cars you imagine that today's SL sort of grew and they had the the folding metal roof and it just had to grow the sort of bulk it just looks bigger and it is physically bigger than this car this car is so register B small way sort of easy to park what other who did the steering on it but it's like a taxi turning circle one of these I mean it is incredibly small turning circle for the sort of car it means and the other nice touches is when you put into reverse it's a really slow reverse it's like a low speed it's completely different speeds when you put it in first all sort of clever sort of stuff like that so what the sadie's used to do in this day only we've cost a huge amount and it was a an era of Mercedes when they were really completely over it over engineered but then on the second-hand market we get to enjoy that over-engineering and that's why you know I think it's a great vibe or they are one to nine ranges I just so happen to pick them the crazy b12 one just sort of man laughs sort of made it possible we're going the boats away and he just gets sense me on there French police have got a lot more active these days so here we are where do steady 70 miles there the gross world at 1,800 ribs credibly low stressed engineless okay we get intimate now of the authority' Regis we'll do this or the distance all day long travel over your opinon we even visited all smart so you could guess it's just how fast this car will accelerate over save 80 rounds the speedometer it's shockingly fast throughout the Mars now this cars where the sweet streets ahead ESL my moment watch that now excuse me excuse me is a bit shaky returns with the walks amazing part of the world and this somehow this car sort of suits being here gives you a little idea why we bought this car for this spectacular reason good it amazing Monaco never sort of disappoints but yeah SL 600 not an obvious choice of car for my garage probably not the most exciting one but it serves its purpose Dahlia so well we blast off to Italy in it you just know this car okay to 140,000 miles he's gonna do another 140,000 miles no problem at all it's somehow I think he's starting to age really nicely that r129 as well it offers quite a lot in this format why why bison stead of the sl500 that's a that's a tougher question because certainly the 500 is a little bit meat more economical but there's some sort of cash aid having a v12 I suppose inside is probably its most dated feature the only place this cars really shown anywhere is on the seat so it's all a bit scruffy here when we work gloss over that put that over there the others incidentally these seats there are monster weight they say they're made of magnesium frame but it's one of the first of the seat belt and all enclosed all fully electric you see the thing on the door and when it does it does headrests if I just move this headrest goes out and there's seat belts that is the shock with this car everything works although there is one thing that a previous owner very kindly got rid of and that's on the dampers SL six hundreds came with special Dan Povich that adjusted had to gas fears at the top they are a bit unreliable and there are some scary bills to be had someone few years ago with this car put in conventional suspension off the sl500 so it has completely what we term a dry suspension works really well though what else is there to see not a lot really just a sort of quality car I love the way all locks oh there's rear seats just about in there that surprisingly we use quite often because the cost of taxes it up down here are unbelievable so we have friends down we say Oh we'd collect you from the airport in your cell and they say woof so I take a tax if you find I say they'll cost you 80 euros for like a 10-minute ride suddenly they don't mind squashing in there for 10 minutes and we spend the money in a restaurant instead you go anyway I hope you enjoyed this slightly different version of Harry's garage in the South of France if you do it please subscribe to my channel because there'll be more videos coming along very soon see you later you

Channel: Harry's garage

Views: 778,042

Rating: 4.9319534 out of 5

Keywords: Harry, Metcalfe, Mercedes, V12, Engine, SL, 600, evo, diaries, R129, R107, SL-Class

Id: LhX0Y2wQfqo

Length: 21min 7sec (1267 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 06 2014