Category: Exotic Sports 
Price Range: £33,411 to £68,923
F1 safety car looks, incredible noise, searing performance, surprisingly useable on the road.
Auto 'box robs some of the driver involvement, pricey.
AMG supercar stuns in its performance and usability.
Tug the conventional door handle open and, at first, the Black Series interior intimidates. Blame the race-spec sports seats that only adjust horizontally and just lack a four-point safety harness for total authenticity.
The flat-bottomed F1-inspired steering wheel also screams its racing intentions: it's only a shame then, that for some it might be offset a little too much to the right.
Once comfortable, the drama continues as you stab the silver starter button beside the oddly shaped T-bar gear selector and listen to the unforgettably loud bark from the specially tuned four-exit exhaust.
Pulling away into heavy traffic, usually the arch nemesis of any supercar, the experience is surprisingly conventional: it's possible to drive the Black Series in a similar manner to the base CLK, thanks to the well-behaved, smooth V8, despite some occasional bellowing.
But beneath the civilised demeanour you can tell this super Merc is a car itching to be unleashed. The steering is weightier and responds to any off-centre inputs much quicker than other models.
On the cold, damp roads of our test route, the track-focused Pirelli PZero Corsa tyres meant caution was always the order of the day. Experience says they're more comfortable in drier, warmer conditions, but they do emphasise the Black Series' quick-witted limited slip diff. Even at slow speed the CLK's steering is incredibly sensitive to the throttle.
A recalibrated ESP means it allows a fair degree of slippage before it intervenes and prevents over-exuberance and the potential for spectacular intimate liaisons with the scenery.
If you were expecting a devastating turn of speed, the CLK at first doesn't feel quite as quick as the equivalent 911 GT3, the Black Series produces its peak torque at a fairly high 5,250rpm, lacking the lower-range sledgehammer-punch of the old supercharged 5.5-litre V8: to its credit, however, it has a broader spread of power.
AMG has tweaked the 7-Tronic gearbox for quicker changes and when the gearbox is set to M (manual), it holds gears rather than changes up near the red line. In any case, as good as the gearbox is, it still lacks the ultimate involvement and satisfaction of a decent manual gearbox.
Latest Readers' Drives About the Mercedes CLK-Class Cabriolet
wrote on 17 07 2006