Mercedes-Benz SL 500 (2008-) Review

Comfort and Equipment

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The Mercedes-Benz SL 500's ride is excellent: just firm enough to remind you that it is a sports roadster, soft enough to glide over speed bumps and road imperfections, and superb control over pitching and wallowing.

Roof-up, the folding metal hard-top makes for near coupe-like insulation, and roof-down, the well-designed wind deflector, high windows and Airscarf neck-level heating protect against buffeting or chills. The climate control air conditioning is good, too. The roof takes 16 seconds to open or close, with one-touch power-operation. A power-operated bootlid is optional, but not particularly useful.

The leather seats are well-shaped, multi-adjustable and supportive, but it really is surprising that such a long, wide car can have such a small cockpit. The cabin is narrow, with occupants elbow-to-elbow across the central console, and there is little by way of storage apart from some skinny door pockets, a small glovebox and a bit of space behind the seats. The boot's quite big, though: up to 399 litres with the roof up and no spare wheel, or 310 litres with spare wheel in place of sealing foam.

The instruments - to a familiar Mercedes layout - are easy to read and understand, but the Comand control system (with voice-activated controls for some functions) remains fiddly and certain items obscure. The digital radio is a welcome fitment for city driving, but once out in rural areas where the signal is patchy, it fails to transmit without interruption, and broadcast is affected by trees, tunnels, railway bridges... We also failed to operate the CD multi-changer in our test car, the Comand menu screen freezing.

When the audio system works, it incorporates a DVD player, (optionally) voice-activated sat nav, hard-drive music file storage and iPod/USB inputs; a surround-sound Harman Kardon 510-watt system is an optional upgrade.