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| 2006 Mercedes-benz Slk-class Review | |||
| Whether you're about to spend $40K on a brand new car, or half that on a used car, it is always important to learn as much as you can about the used car. Read these car reviews to learn about all aspects of the vehicle. Each of the usedcar reviews cover interior and exterior features, options, road tests, and more. | |||
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Introduction
| Road Test
| Inside & Out
| Other Thoughts
| Last Word
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| Inside & Out | |||
Despite larger all-around dimensions and a fatter face showing to the atmosphere, the SLK's drag coefficient dropped to 0.34 / 0.37 with the top up / down. They also claim 30% / 20% greater resistance to the forces of front / rear lift. It doesn't have those swiveling headlights everyone's been squawking about, but watch closely and you'll notice the fog lights lighting up one side of the car whenever you take turns at 25 MPH or below with your blinker on.If you don't mind a little complexity in exchange for no-compromises driving, the SLK's top still tops all others. All you gotta do is hold down that little button next to the parking brake, and throughout the next 22 seconds (down from 25 in the first SLK) watch the various body panels do their dance: trunk opens its mouth, roof peels back, folds like origami and settles in, trunk closes. We are amused. The SLK will hold the honor of being the lowest-priced car with a power retractable roof until the Pontiac G6 convertible and Volvo C70 get here. Even with the roof above your head, designers seem to have scooped out enough room for all but the tallest drivers. The seat goes back quite a ways as well, and even if the high-rise beltline and hood make you feel kind of buried, feelings of confinement are minimal. The seats' manual (!) adjusters work just fine, with no-nonsense levers that let you sit ideally in seconds. The truly colossal news is that the steering wheel now tilts in addition to telescoping, finally laying down a big welcome mat for drivers of more than just one stature. And they will feel welcome in this cabin. The inspired curves are a refreshing departure from the all-business look of the last model and most surfaces are firm, while the important ones still soft enough to cushion any arm or elbow you might spontaneously slam down. Most of what you see and control is laid out in a straightforward fashion except for a few details here and there. The main gauges are fine, but the trip computer information seems a bit scattered. The steering wheel controls are where they should be, but none of the eight buttons can change radio presets or CD tracks, the most important functions of all. The windblocker's a pretty clumsy, mesh-fabric contraption that works like a cargo net - by hooking and unhooking to attachment pegs on the roll bars - which makes for a murky rear view when up, a sloppy dangling mess when down, and a bending-stretching affair to convert between the two. The cupholders are of the cheap spring-out variety perched at the top of the dash, possibly blocking out pedestrians with Pepsis, and of course there's the long-running Mercedes flaw of the dislocated turn signal down by your knee. In better news, the COMAND user interface (containing the navigation system, stereo, and general settings) is easy to use and intuitive, at least by German standards. Functions seem a bit scattered throughout the numerous buttons (whose on-screen labels sometimes disappear) but everything can be mastered with a little time and patience, partly thanks to the 8-way controller knob that holds things together. And COMAND did not usurp the dual-zone climate controls, which stand alone and away on conventional knobs. Mercedes' DVD navigation system is reasonably friendly as well, but now and then an incident suggests a better brain is in order. The unit I tested on a CLS once got confused and gave up; this time, I was wandering around the obscure trenches of Lake Arrowhead, CA when it COMANDed me to crawl nervously through a rocky, single-lane road at 2 MPH. I played along right until the piles of snow by the roadside stood taller than my shoulders. Prodigious processing power notwithstanding, the system could use an upgrade to Common Sense 2.0. Use the SLK for casual cruising around familiar roads and your attention will shift to the stereo, which in Harman-Kardon form blasts 380 clear, deep watts worth of treble and bass through eight speakers (three in each door, one center, one sub). It's very strong and very well-suited to the SLK's cabin and features Logic7 sound, MP3 playback, and an Aux jack in the glovebox. A few gripes: the automatic volume leveling feature often overcompensates, momentarily blasting your ears. At some times but not others, you're only allowed to select a new radio preset every five seconds. At one point, my CD was playing with no volume; cycling it off and on fixed it. And I'll always wonder why Germans insist on everything being on or everything being off. Can't I concentrate on the map without playing a CD? Aside from the disc changer hogging the air conditioned glovebox (oh goody, frozen CDs), the SLK is pretty smart with its storage solutions. There are two center consoles - one normal, one upright - and the former opens to the left or right. Each rider get a map pocket, and the space below the climate controls snugly embraces a cell phone. Lastly, Mercedes found a bunch of trunk space in back - 9.5 cubic feet in coupe mode and a still-decent 6.5 in convertible mode - and a gigantic 18.5 gallon gas tank spells a full day's worth of carefree cruising. The SLK also does the safety thing. After the expected two-stage air bags (child hazard: the passenger's doesn't turn off) come knee bags, plus "side/thorax" bags that extend upwards towards the head. (Should any deploy, Automatic Collision Notification sends help via the standard Tele Aid system.) And don't forget one key advantage held by members of the $40,000 roadster class but not the $20,000 class: those roll bars you see behind the seats are real. Mercedes went so far as to drop this baby on its head from 20 inches off the ground to see what would happen (don't try this at home), and claim that the A-pillars hardly deformed at all. |
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