The Mercedes SL roadster has always been a supreme luxury droptop, and the best part was that was the fact that you could have 12 cylinders under the hood if you were willing to pony up the cash. But an admittedly thinly-sourced rumor says this is the last hurrah for the V12 SL.
Production of the Mercedes-AMG SL65 will cease production in the next few months, according to the German blog mbpassion. The Mercedes-AMG SL65 came with a twin-turbo 12 that cranked out 603 horsepower and 738 lb-ft of torque and had a starting MSRP of $222,000. So if you want a V12 SL roadster and have almost a quarter of a million dollars just burning a hole in your pocket, this could be your final opportunity to score an SL65.
The problem, of course, is that the SL65 commanded a $70,000 premium and arguably had only a marginal performance improvement over the 577 HP SL63 that almost no one would consider “slow.” Also, there’s the AMG GT now, and while they’re pretty different in purpose, its performance and niche have kind of displaced the SL in a lot of ways.
This move should come as no surprise as AMG boss Tobias Moer dropped the hint last year in an interview with Top Gear that a V12 was no longer needed in anything other than a Maybach branded car:
The V12 market has changed, and I think it could be that we have to call it ‘done’...“We still have V12 aficionados, but they’re more into Maybach. We don’t need a luxury car like that in our AMG portfolio, so it could be that this is the last generation of V12 AMG S-Class’.
Which we find Objectionable and Wrong, as everyone deserves a V12.
The next generation SL roadster is expected to be exclusively an AMG-branded thing with a possible hybrid V8 topping the range with over 800 horsepower. Yes, we recognize how ludicrous that sounds. It felt wrong to write it. But, here we are.
And if that sticker price is just a bit too steep and you are feeling adventurous, you can score an older used SL65 with practically the same power figures for less than the price of a new Corvette convertible:
Jalopnik has reached out to Mercedes for comment on the demise of the SL65.
Mercedes has responded by saying, “They have made no formal announcement.”