The Super Rare £98,000 Mercedes AMG SL60 (R129) Review

[Music] hello everyone this week we have got something of a special on really you see I've been invited to come to the north of England by the lovely people at John Ashley sports cars they are specialists in the well the weird and the wonderful and as you all all know that's something I always love to talk about we're starting off with something that might be seemingly on the ordinary side but I assure you is actually quite special it's this a Mercedes sl65 a temple to this car from about 1998 under the bonnet is a 6 liter v8 produced by the good people at AMG and this is one of the first cars made after AMG have been taken over by Daimler Benz but the truth is I'm not a Mercedes expert I am slowly beginning to like them thanks to my exposure to some pretty decent marks if you haven't seen those videos please do go check him out so what I'm gonna do for the walk-around is I'm instead gonna hand you over to somebody that according to his very piston heads a user named loves his mugs my buddy Darren well thank you James for handing over to me as you may have seen already on James's channel he did a video on my III 20 coupe I and this shares some parts with it brakes and wheel hubs and bits and bobs like that but I am overjoyed that the owner was able to let me have a little go in this because I absolutely adore the SL 60 this particular car it has a later interior from the rarefied Silver Arrows model that was a run out the last hundred or so cars in the UK the 500s received this very interior and a previous owner has actually installed it in this car and it looks wonderful we upfront have the 6 litre m1 19 32 valve engine produces 380 horsepower now I do this because at the time Mercedes produced the v12 SL 600 masae DS didn't want the lesser v8 to be more powerful that on paper than their flagship 600 the SL 600 with its six liter v12 produced 389 horsepower so AMG were a bit creative and just said 380 in all reality these engines are known to produce over 400 horsepower you could actually get this more powerful SL 64 a little bit less however the owner has the original bill of sale and it was still some 98 and a half thousand pounds in 1998 that is a shedload of cash but look what you got for it something very very rare a reported 49 right-hand drive cars were ever produced and just look at it it's phenomenal and I love it so that's enough nerdy knowledge from me I shall now take early retirement and hand back to the wonderful JM I'm back and we're out driving and if I was gonna use one word to describe this car it would be big if I was gonna use another word to describe this car it would be majestic this thing is awesome now I'm only pulling along here just tickling that massive v8 and it's just such a wonderful place to be you are a nice viewer that big ol bonnet there the whole thing feels like it's been tuned from a solid lump of metal and it's just oozing a bit of Germanic cool really I know a lot of modern euro cars can be just somewhat in differ but this is not this is such a nice place to be and I know where there's not as nice as it has been last week but I just don't care this thing is wonderful now I know and as down probably will have mentioned to you in the walk around these were really really expensive cars back in the day and it might not look like it from the outside but from in here it really feels it I've driven several Ferraris of the period and this is considerably nicer inside and much better put together you have to remember that at this point in time your Italian supercar interiors were just a bit yeah they were still quite flimsy and well a bit cheap feeling this thing though does feel utterly solid it's really quite wonderful and as for that engine and this allegedly conservative power figure let's find out well you got to put your foot all the way to the floor and it's quite reluctant actually to change down I'm going to slow down again and try that again because you've got a very long throttle pedal oh it does move it does move it takes a little while to get into its stride but it actually does quite like revving ow I mean the red line in this is a lowly 6,000 rpm but what a thing now it's a bit soft and wallowy but it is of course very comfortable you see the thing is sometimes I would complain about it in a car but with an SL soft is I think what I want I want a car that's supremely comfy this car for example was purchased by a doctor is you've got to think who's gonna drop a hundred thousand pounds on what is ultimately America because I compare these with a Ferrari at a time because they were as expensive as a Ferrari at the time you could have bought a new 355 for the same money that Mercedes were asking for this and of course you might look at it now and go why did you do that but if you're the sort of person that just wants a big slicer luxury this is it and that engine is just buttery smooth now I've been advised against using the shifter to manually choose gears because it can be a little bit finicky but the handling is actually not too bad the steering's got a pretty pleasant weight to it and you do have this constant sense of the fact that you are in a very big heavy car there's lots of nice features in here as well we've got up the little retractable kind of wind jammer in the back I honestly have no idea why they put little back seats in these things because I just do not see the point but for a place to be in this is rather mighty this is indeed the kind of car I'd expect a powerfully built company director to have now I have to confess something this is not the first time that I ever drove an SL I have driven one before it was one a couple of generations old I don't know the chassis goes very well I believe it's about 2008 2009 car but it was an SL 320 and I got in that car I drove it my dad was thinking of buying it and I drove it and I just came out of it at the end thinking why that was a car just geared up for old people everything was soft and light and woolly and it wasn't very quick at all because very heavy car with no power this though I come out of this and I go I know why this is the sort of car that you know how much power it's got maybe somebody else does most people don't we were following it to the location to drive and nobody bats an eyelid about this car nobody really knows what it is nobody really cares except Darren easy having a little man gasm all morning looking at this thing but driving this I totally get it I mean I hate the notion I really do of me becoming a Merc fan because well I've never been ever there's only one if you're looking 10 years agos only one Mercedes they even you know raised a flutter in my heart and it's not just from having a lot of burgers and that was the old and these the CLK DTM AMG because that's mega cool I'm fortunate there are also extortion of money this thing though I Drive this I'd never owned one I'd never have one of these go just don't look at it and want it but now having driven it I get it I really get it I guess I've just been lucky I've driven a lot of nice mercs and this one is actually different to all the others but what a machine you need to stamp on the brakes quite hard if you want it to stop it's a big old boat but oh she sounds good in the process ah this is not a bad start to the week I hope you guys enjoy what we've got coming up because believe me I know Dan will disagree with me but this is perhaps the most ordinary thing we're driving this week thanks for watching guys we'll see you on the next one bye bye [Music]

Channel: JayEmm on Cars

Views: 30,392

Rating: 4.8971725 out of 5

Keywords: Diary, VLOG, Car, Sound, Test, video, Review, Comparison, JayEmm on Cars, Elise, Mercedes, Mercedes-Benz, AMG, Mercedes AMG, SL60, AMG SL60, SL600, R129, Mercedes SL, SL60 Review, 1999 SL60, Silver Arrows, Silver Arrow Edition

Id: 8omXCc-CBqQ

Length: 10min 45sec (645 seconds)

Published: Thu May 23 2019