Mercedes has a brand new supercar named the Mercedes SLS. With starting rates of around 180,000 dollars it is priced to compete directly with all the likes of Porsche, Ferrari and of course Aston Martin. Besides all the usual overall performance evaluations there is one element this car has and that the other ones do not – the gullwing Mercedes is back.

Enjoyment: well, there’s a 6.2 liter engine in the front offering a rumble to match nearly anything to leave Detroit. With over five hundred and fifty horsepower the Mercedes SLS is an entertaining drive even when the handling was poor. Luckily that’s definitely not the case. It is poised, agile and although its feels pretty rigid on the roads the combination of engine of handling provides a wonderful drive. The Mercedes SLS GT3 – which is basically the sports edition – provides even greater handling.

In terms of functionality the car is a little bit of a mixed bag. Mercedes have obviously looked at how this car is gonna be used and the SLS comes with common functions to offer every day usability such as satellite navigation and a decent stereo. Nonetheless the gullwings, as legendary as they’re, really make it a pain to get in and out of the vehicle, make the car quite wide and also you really need to stretch to pull the doors down once you are inside the car. The design also implies headroom is fairly tight too.

Then the gearbox is a dual clutched affair which operates really well. There’s a minor delay whenever you flick the paddles yet in general it feels very responsive and sharp. The vehicle is very clearly rear wheel drive. The seating position is really back and harks back to honest, old school GT’s and combined with the very sharp steering you have total faith in precisely where the front of the car is gonna go. This super car can easily go round corners really, really fast – in case you tried hard enough you could actually compete with a four-wheel drive 911 Turbo. It’s also blazingly quick in a straight line – very amazing for a quite heavy, front engined GT.

When looking at value for cash – can any super car at this selling price be considered fair value? Probably not but put together with its peers it’s well priced. Let us take a look at it one other way – alongside the Mercedes McLaren SLR, the Mercedes SLS is quicker, handles much better and is less costly to the tune of nearly two hundred thousand bucks.