Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren - Jay Leno's Garage

I'm very fortunate to have the very first at least the United States SLR now this is probably one of the most misunderstood supercars of all time is in GT is it a sports car it's a fascinating combination I think it has actually has a higher top speed than the Porsche Carrera GT by 3 or 4 miles per hour this is the fastest car I've ever driven I was fortunate enough with mercedes-benz to go to Spain as a race track they're called idiotic I think I'm pronouncing it right it's like a seven mile oval some crazy thing like that and we were able to drive this at an indicated 212 on the speedometer which is about 207 miles an hour for a long long time I remember pulling into the pits and standing on the brakes and getting out and seeing that the caliper was on fire and the Mercedes gotta go yeah yeah that is what it does yeah do not worry about that they all catch it's supposed to do that that's what they do I said really fire come yeah soon as you go to fire blowout I said okay fine and we went back out on the track and for two days they said go out and try to break it and you know we couldn't break it it's a fantastic car it probably has more miles on it than any other supercar my garage here because it's the most livable as much as I love my Carrera GT that's probably the most focused sports car but it's way too low almost to drive on public roads it won't fit in my driveway at home because there's a hump you can't get into most gas stations because it scrapes in fact there's a factory lift kit for the Carrera GT like when you drive it normally and you go over a speed bump because and with the lift kit it just goes so there's a difference of about eighth of an inch this is a proper car that it has a trunk that can actually carry stuff it has normal ground clearance has ceramic brakes and most importantly it was designed by one of my heroes Gordon Murray who of course the df1 McLaren and the rocket car as you see the going doors fabulous build quality on this car everything is perfect the stitching and the seats and the dashboard everything lines up perfectly all your little shunt lines here nothing nothing deviates by even a tenth of a millimeter at the front engine but actually more of a mid-engine the engine is set way back let me show you this thing it is a 617 horsepower weighs about 37 3800 pounds which seems a little heavy for a car of this nature but compared to the regular SL Mercedes which is well over 4,000 pounds more close to 43 44 hundred pounds the whole body of course is carbon-fiber 3-valve engine 5.4 liter the supercharger course the amount of work it takes to get your catalytic converters and your exhaust system exiting out here there was so much heat coming out of this car it is it is unbelievable I mean just the engineering this is the kind of thing I like look at this here look at the way this whole cantilever system here works and this hood is actually quite light I mean it doesn't weigh I've got the 19-inch wheels and on it I've had this car now for three years and no blow by no grease no oil leaks no nothing it's just been pretty much a bulletproof car the main problem maybe people have with this car is that it's more of a GT than a true sports car I personally wish it had a proper manual gearbox it's got a 5-speed automatic and it's got paddle shifters that being said I think this car was within a second of the Porsche Carrera GT about around the Nurburgring I don't think I could get it that good but it's amazing how well the traction control system works I mean I remember going around and sort of losing it on a corner and feeling the traction control literally go slap you in the face hit you in the head take the wheel and straighten you out again it's pretty amazing and it at over 200 miles an hour it's rocks rocks table it was pretty amazing and these were not cars that were modified in any way for the track they're all the stock SLR as good as the car is under a hundred when you're well over a hundred then it really comes into play all the handling and the traction control the aerodynamics that's what Gordon Murray does best but let's take a look around the car you know with most cars modern cars like this with all this electronics and computers you've got to constantly run a battery charge when you're given these cars they give you like a little battery charger it plugs in here and when you're not using the car you it'll it'll charge it up the interesting thing is most of these modern cars if you don't run them for two or three week period they'll drain the whole battery whether it's a Ford GT or the Carrera so you need to keep the battery it's up on them I'd say you can put a set of golf clubs back there if you want I don't play golf that's why I like cars five-speed box you got your paddle shifters here on the end of the steering wheel you have suspension settings here I just keep it on race all the time here this is for your transmission one two and three position three as a racecar setting then you have right down here your phone and keep your registration all that and then it kind of like that Magic Wallet you know the thing with you this opens up as well to have another storage compartment in there even closing the hood is this huge elaborate deal you kind of push it down there and then it slides on tracks I have kind of a long history with mercedes-benz I work for them when I was in college who works a place called foreign motors in Boston in those days anything that wasn't built in Detroit was called foreign and we sold mercedes banz rolls-royce Bentley and later on Citroen SM and a few other cars the hot car at that time was the 6.3 Mercedes that was considered the fastest four-door sedan in the world at the time and I remember a Mercedes big advertising slogan why would anyone pay $10,000 for a four-door sedan that seemed like a tremendous amount of money because Cadillacs were about five or six thousand dollars I've saved all my mercedes-benz memorabilia over the years the other reason I like my link to Mercedes Benz is one of my favorite racecar drivers of all time Stirling Moss drove the me Emelia in his SLR Mercedes in fact I was fortunate enough at Pebble Beach to get to ride with sir sterling Moss here he is here with the car 7:22 was the time that he left in the morning that's why the car has that number that's the 1955 300 SLR that he drove on an average speed of over 100 miles an hour for a thousand miles I was at having dinner with Stirling Moss at a Mercedes function he said Jay you know tomorrow I'm going to be driving the SLR around Pebble Beach would you like to go for a ride and I said well that'd be great I said what time he said a two o'clock two o'clock and I was so excited I was up on I didn't want to be late so at 8 o'clock in the morning I was actually standing by the car because they didn't want to take a chance that I'd missed my ride with sir Sir Stirling Moss Erie is here here we are doing the whole deal and I've saved all my sterling Moss memorabilia over the years and they have come out with a 722 version of the SLR in honor of us sirs Stirling Moss it's amazing how many people took pictures of Stirling and I that day at Pebble Beach people are kind enough to mail me all the copies and as you can see I'm the happiest boy in the world they didn't get to go with one of your childhood heroes you know a lot of times you don't want to meet you heroes because you go oh my god they're like drunk or they're idiots they're racist so there's something there's something horrible so you try to avoid meeting girls but this is one time it was everything I expected it to be Sir Stirling Moss was also my hero when I was a kid and my mother was in Scotland so he was a great patriotic British driver so when I met him he was a true gentleman and and boy he still had it when he took me through the corkscrew at that car even at 78 years old he was doing this I mean it was pretty amazing it was a lot of fun it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity now if you're a Fangio fan oh I have something here Bonzo caused job for Mercedes this is his very first World Championship Cup so that's that's pretty cool I got to know Fangio he was quite old when I met him of course but to you very nice man we've got to be friendly and that's his first world champion look what you got for being the world champion in 1951 look here you go you risk your life you make like no money is it cup for you it's right here is the front brake caliper for my SLR I got a call from the factory one day oh there's an update I'm gonna change out your calipers what are the caliper like this cost it said about 15 grand nope it's pretty much a work of art you know let's fire it up there's no actual sort of key it's an infrared deal you put it in you turn it on your gear leaver here you flip that up don't you start say what see you know it's kind of like they both look the same from like five feet away but one is really now you can shift two ways with this car you can shift like this or you could shift with the paddle well this car is big developer sadies came out with their 7 feet 7 speed transmission which they have in their newer cars but it couldn't take the torque in the power of this so this has the traditional five speakers the critics really went after this car and I thought rather unfairly I just wish it was a commence with a beta man when that being said it goes pretty good thank said this car come under a little bit of criticism although they stopped incredibly well in fact if you go to youtube and google top gear SLR Mercedes you'll see Jeremy Clarkson stop this car at 120 and the same distance novel car stops in 60 miles an hour they're a little touchy you first touch them and they grip and then you press them and they grip hard you can't quite modulate the pedal as well as you can some other cars but that being said they're incredible you wonder why the car so have ivanova bodies on it there's a lot of safety built into this guy you know and a rollover of this thing you've got a walkaway it's hard you have a kid going up to him another nice thing about the air brake is since this is la it also works as a bullet deflector you know kind of like Bond had on the Aston Martin somebody's shooting at you up you just flip it up there you go and you clean all the shells off the inside what you got can turn off the traction control as well we can't really turn it off you can turn it off a little bit you know the Germans never give up power completely but it's incredibly stable in high school you know that's where it got Maurice geniuses if you drove this car around Los Angeles at under 60 or 70 miles an hour all day long you might go what's all the fuss it's not to you getting on a track or taken to a place like Spain I did he added where I drove it and you get an actual 200 to seven point seven miles an hour and for a long time pretty amazing because think of the European cars have adiabatic - whale and this had a very guttural American v8 sound and like a big American v8 you could do this

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 1,579,900

Rating: 4.9068255 out of 5

Keywords: Jay Leno, Automotive, Cars, Garage, horsepower, Jay, Leno, mods, custom car, Speed, Fast, modded cars, mechanic, fastest car, Jay Leno's Garage, cars, exotic cars, interview, custom, Leno car, funny, Leno funny, car show, Rare, Motorcycles, racing, jay leno interview, auto, drive, power, fast, amazing, cool, the cars, vehicle, mercedes-benz slr mclaren, unbreakable, supercar

Id: wa_UGRN0wds

Length: 12min 36sec (756 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 24 2012