The lovely Larkin Hill, Mercedes-Benz USA's media relations representative for the West Coast, promised me that I had quite a nice surprise at the San Francisco airport for my drive down the coast to the Monterey Peninsula for the 2008 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance. She was right, as a sparkling silver, 2009 Mercedes-Benz SL63 AMG roadster was waiting for me at the Park n' Fly near SFO. I loaded my luggage into the SL's spacious trunk, slathered my face with SPF 55, lowered the power-folding hard top, set the navigation system for the Lodge at Pebble Beach, and headed south on the 101. This, I thought, is not a bad way to start my Pebble weekend.
The SL55 makes way for the SL63
I first saw the SL63 last December at AMG headquarters in Affalterbach, where a small group of American journalists were given a sneak peek of the car that was to replace the infamous SL55 AMG, the most successful AMG-badged Mercedes in the four-decade history of the tuning house. More than any other vehicle, the SL55 had cemented AMG's reputation for transforming Mercedes-Benz luxury cars into high-performance Mercedes-Benz luxury cars, ones that bristled with the sort of rubber-melting power and heart-on-the-sleeve attitude that previously had not been associated with Mercedes-Benzes. The SL55 was particularly popular in America, where half of the 21,000 SL55s built from 2001 to 2007 were sold.... Read full article