SA Road Tests

Welcome

This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here probably applies to the models you can get at home.
*To read one of our road tests, just select from the menu on the left.
*Please remember too, that prices quoted were those ruling on the days I wrote the reports.


We live the sound of the 2013 Mercedes-Benz SL 63 AMG

Quadrophonic bachelor pad

Forget finesse; as you fire it up, this thing sounds like a Thai long-tailed boat. Not those sissy little four-cylinder jobs at the floating market; we mean the big mamas that ply their trade up and down the Mekong, from the Delta to the Golden Triangle, running big old Pontiac V8s with open pipes. When the Vietnamese war spilled over into neighbouring territories, they were fitted with machine guns – just in case. Today, they almost make the trek halfway around the world worthwhile; just for their sound.

It’s not just the guttural, rasping rumble that makes your soul sing; it’s in the way the SL63 AMG looks. The logbook might say “2013,” but the fins and the bling and the styling all say “grandson of 300 SL from 1952.” The only things missing are those totally impractical gull-wing doors. They looked sexy, but have you ever thought about how you would get in and out of it in your garage at home or in a crowded supermarket parking lot? Forget it, Karl-Heinz; it isn’t going to happen.

One thing this new one does get right is its return to the spirit of SL, or Sport Leicht (sport light). The body is all-aluminium; cold-formed, moulded, rolled and extruded in various grades and thicknesses to make it the strongest, stiffest SL ever – and 125 kg lighter than its predecessor. It also looks the part with its long bonnet, short passenger compartment and elegant boot design, but don’t get the idea that it’s compact. At a shade over 4,6 metres, it's longer than some SUVs.

Fit enough safety kit to fill a small book and bolt in 5461 ccs of all-aluminium, quad-cam, 32-valve V8. Add a turbocharger to each bank of cylinders so it unleashes 537 big German horses (395 kW). Then couple up AMG Speedshift MCT 7, a wet-clutch version of M-B’s 7-Gmatic transmission, to keep them all under control. The combination thunders up to 100 km/h in 4,3 seconds and on to an electronically governed 250 km/h. More to the point, in the 12 seconds it takes your average little city car to reach 100, the SL 63 AMG is blasting across the next horizon at 200 km/h.

Furnish the interior with a pair of individually, and almost infinitely, adjustable Nappa leather chairs, add black leather and suede trim for doors, dash and roof lining and you have a bachelor pad to envy. Those seats don’t simply adjust for height, reach, tilt and recline; you can tailor the exact amount of sideways support you would like in the seat cushions and the back rests. Then you select from three degrees of active bolstering as well. What this means is that, as G-forces in bends ease your body sideways, the side cushions plump up to meet and support you, and as the movement shifts, so does the support. It’s a non-chemical version of Ecstasy.

Obviously, it’s not just about seats; you need driver aids as well. The sportily designed AMG instrument cluster provides a wealth of information with its TFT colour monitor, AMG start-up display, AMG main menu and Racetimer. Then there’s active parking assistance, Airscarf neck-level heating, COMAND online communications and satnav system with six-disc DVD changer, an anti-theft alarm system, a Harman Kardon Logic 7 surround sound system, a boot lid that opens and closes with a sideways kick beneath the bumper, keyless go, automatic pop-up roll-over bars for driver and passenger, and electric draught-stop.

This last item is really worth-while, making the difference between gentle breezes and intrusive buffeting and discomfort when the fold-away roof is stowed. We will obviously only vouch for its effectiveness at legal speeds, but Mercedes-Benz assures us that it works ‘way beyond that. With all its power, engineering and handling kit, this AMG is magical to drive. It accelerates frighteningly quickly, it hangs on beyond the limits of logic and it rumbles like a Mekong River gunboat. You have to get one.

Test car from MBSA press fleet

The numbers
Price: R2 169 000
Engine: See text
Power: 395 kW at 5500 rpm
Torque: 800 Nm between 2000 and 4500 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 4,3 seconds
Maximum speed: Governed to 250 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: About 12,8 l/100 km
Tank: 75 litres
Boot: 364 to 504 litres
Warranty and Maintenance: MobiloDrive 120 contract for 6 years/120 000 km

What We Do

This is a one-man show, which means that road test cars entrusted to me are driven only by me. Some reviewers hand test cars over to their partners to use as day-to-day transport and barely experience them for themselves.

What this means to you is that every car reviewed is given my own personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every car goes through real world testing; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.

My articles appear every Wednesday in the motoring pages of The Witness, South Africa's oldest continuously running newspaper, and occasionally on Saturdays in Weekend Witness as well. I drive eight to ten vehicles most months of the year (press cars are withdrawn over the festive season - wonder why?) so not everything gets published in the paper. Those that are, get a tagline but the rest is virgin, unpublished and unedited by the political-correctness police. Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so they can see I do actually exist.

I am based in Pietermaritzburg, KZN, South Africa. This is the central hub of the KZN Midlands farming community; the place farmers go to buy their supplies and equipment, truck their goods to market, send their kids to school and go to kick back and relax.
So occasionally a cow, a goat or a horse may add a little local colour by finding its way into the story or one of the pictures. It's all part of the ambience!

Comments?
Want to ask a question, comment or just tell me you thoroughly disagree with what I say? That's your privilege, because if everybody agreed on everything, the world would be a boring place. All I ask is that you remain calm, so please blow off a little steam before venting too vigorously.