Mercedes working on a successor to the SLR?

nicholisd
Dec 1, 2015
2 min read

We all came to know and love the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, the love child of two fenomenal car manufacturers. Launched in 2003, the first SLR was a 5.4 litre supercharged V8, 617hp beast and it cost just shy of $500,000. It could also do a 0-60 time of just 3.4 seconds and had a top speed of about 180mph. Twelve years ago those were some amazing numbers for the spec sheet of a car and despite the ridiculous at the time price, it sold a lot. It sold so much that it was in production for the best part of 7 whole years and even though it was eventually killed, the legend is still remembered today.

Now Mercedes are working on a brand new model of the SLR with the help of their performance brand AMG. They say it won't be made to compete with the Porsche 918, the McLaren P1 and the LaFerrari but it will also have hybrid technology. We have information that suggest that the engineers at Mercedes are currently trying to decide if the car is going to be front-engined or mid-engined. These two options are still under developments but here's what we know. There are two options at the moment: One of them is that the car will be front engined, rear-wheel drive with electric motors powering the front wheels and a supercharged V6 under the hood putting out 650hp. It's said by Mercedes that this version of the SLR will go against the McLaren 650S and Ferrari 488.

The other option is to go with a mid-engine hypercar which would have a supercharged V8 and at least 1,000hp. Also 2 electric motors will be powering the front wheels to help with the grip since the car will be rear-wheel drive. Even though they said that the don't want to compete with the aformentioned hypercar trio of Porsche, McLaren and Ferrari, a 1,000hp hybrid hypercar is pretty much in their category.

If Mercedes decides to built the SLR with the V6 engine, they will be producing 3,000 units per year and it will cost 250,000 euro. But, if they decide to put the V8 version in production, only 750 units per year will be produced and each will have a 7-figure price tag of more than 1,000,000 euro. In either case, the new SLR will have 4 sub-models: a standard coupe, an AMG-Black Series, a roadster and a GT3 variant.