Such cars show up on the market once in a blue moon. This Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Coupe is one of the 1,875 that set wheels on American soil. It is a two-owner sports car that has never been a garage queen, having clocked over 67,000 miles.
Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Coupe Walk Around Video
Usually, owners of expensive cars don’t daily-drive them. They just drive them off the showroom floor, get home, park them there, and occasionally take them to a dealership for maintenance or trailer them to car shows. It is not a stereotype. It is one of the basics of owning a super-exclusive and super-expensive supercar.
One that checks all those boxes is the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Coupe, the spiritual successor of the iconic 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing. It is just as show-stopping as its predecessor, with its aggressive styling and gullwing doors springing upward. A halo car from bumper to bumper, the SLS has been the dream of generations.
What you are looking at is a 2011 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Coupe. Mercedes rolled out 11,700 such cars in its Sindelfingen plant in Germany, offering them as coupes (C197) and Roadsters (R197).
Mercedes-Benz built this car without cutting corners. It was, after all, the first production car developed in-house from the ground up by AMG. It had to look good, drive well, and outrun competition, such as the Ferrari 458 Italia, the Lamborghini Gallardo, and the Aston Martin DBS. And yes, it checked all the boxes.
The hand-built front-mid-mounted naturally aspirated 6.2-liter V8, codenamed M159 and derived from the M156, operating under its elongated hood, pumps out 563 horsepower (571 metric horsepower) and 479 pound-feet (649 Newton meters) of torque.
Those make the coupe rocket from 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds and top out at 197 mph (317 kph). All that power is channeled to the rear wheels by an AMG Speedshift DCT seven-speed automatic transmission with the help of a limited-slip differential.
Its lightweight construction is also to blame for the performance that it comes with. It sports an all-aluminum spaceframe chassis made from 76% contoured aluminum sheets and 20% cast aluminum, which makes the whole structure incredibly strong yet with no compromise on weight.
It also comes with a carbon fiber driveshaft. All these combined help the SLS AMG tip the scales at 3,600 pounds (1,633 kilograms). Why does a “6.3” show up on the fenders if we’re dealing with a 6.2-liter V8? The car was badged as a 6.3 because of AMG’s tradition of naming its models after the larger engines in its lineup, even though it made no sense whatsoever.
The model listed for sale is finished in Iridium Silver Metallic over a Classic Red interior. The cabin is a nod to the automaker’s racing history, with bucket seats and carbon fiber, and analog gauges providing all the relevant driving data in an era when sports cars were still raw and demanded respect because they did not have all the electronics to save the day in case you made a mistake.
However, Mercedes-Benz wasn’t going to lag behind and ignore innovations for the sake of offering a completely mechanical car with no modern interference. So it fitted a display at the front, which runs on the NTG 4 system and is controlled not by direct touch but with the help of a jog wheel. Heated seats are also on board.
A Bang & Olufsen surround sound system provides the soundtrack when the driver has had enough of the V8 loud orchestra. Can that really happen? There is a video of the SLS with the engine on below, if you want to hear the naturally aspirated growl.
The radical SLS AMG rides on 19-inch wheels at the front and 20-inch units at the rear, dated 2016 and 2018, which sounds like they urgently need to be replaced.
The car has had two owners in 15 years and has been garage-kept in warm-climate states such as Texas and California. Well, not exactly garage-kept all the time, because this is one of those vehicles that collect miles instead of dust. The odometer reads 67,419 miles.
After all these miles, the 15-year-old Mercedes-Benz SLS couldn’t be flawless. The Carfax report indicates unspecified damage to the front end of the vehicle in January 2017. The selling dealer also reveals that the front right had to undergo repainting at some point.
There are some chips on the front end and curb rash on the front wheel. Furthermore, the red leather upholstery on the seats and door panels shows signs of wear. However, the car has been prepared for sale and has had its engine oil and filter changed, as well as its door struts replaced.
The next owner will get one key, and that is all the listing on Cars and Bids mentions. No service key, no sticker, service records, no nothing. With six days to go, the highest bid sits at $150,000.
There is still time. SLS Gullwings can sell for anything between $150,000 and $250,000. However, when Black Series examples are involved, the pricing goes through the roof, occasionally hitting the $1 million mark.
