Category: Exotic Sports 
Price Range: No data available
Very fast, very stiff, surprisingly comfortable.
Big and heavy, limited practicality.
Roadster is more appealing than the coupe, but it's still hard to see past the price.
After the underwhelming SLR coupe, which was neither full-on supercar nor continent-munching GT cruiser, and the more powerful but less composed 722 limited edition, here's the McMerc that everyone's been waiting for. Well, maybe not everyone, but certainly some very rich people who for reasons that are obscure to the rest of us don't much care for the Aston Martin DB9 Volante, Bentley Continental GTC or Mercedes's own SL.
It certainly seems to make better sense as a convertible than as a coupe. When it offers the ability to cruise around with the wind in your hair and the sun tanning your Rolex-adorned arm, you won't be so concerned by its lack of Ferrari 599-style agility. The coupe was a hefty car, and the new version is 57kg heavier, at 1,768kg. The increase would have been greater, but the Roadster employs a new carbon fibre layering technique that gives greater strength from fewer layers, thus needing less of the weighty resin that holds the layers together. Aerodynamic drag is slightly up, and stiffness is slightly down, but only very slightly.
To minimise the weight increase, Mercedes and McLaren opted for a semi-automatic soft top rather than the folding hard top used in the SL, and it gives the Roadster a significantly different look, roof up or roof down. The gullwing doors are carried over from the coupe, as are the side-exiting exhaust pipes, the serious aerodynamic bodykit and the mighty supercharged V8 engine.
It's built at McLaren's F1 factory in Woking, Surrey, alongside the F1 racers, and deliveries start in September. The SLR Roadster costs £350,000.
