Let me first say that I really enjoy my SRT8. However, I have always liked the AMG cars, especially the CL65 AMG with it's twin turbo V12 (604 hp and 738 tq). Its hard to believe that the CL65 makes 179 hp and 318 tq MORE than an SRT8. Anyways, I've been debating about selling the SRT8 and buying a used CL65 AMG. Does anyone have one of these or have any experience with one? Also, has anyone raced one? What would it take for an SRT8 to keep up / beat one of these? Thanks.
how big are you? the C's are usually pretty small...not sure how big the "CL" is.... SL65 amgs are AAAAAAWSOME
the cl is huge inside, my uncle has a cl55. dude, if you have the means i say go for it, as long as its less than 6 years old. and by the "means" i mean the ability and cash to take care of it properly. its a tt v12 that runs extremely hot...hotter than our motors. as long as youre savvy of that fact you should be golden, the motors last a lifetime.
love j clarkson: This week I have been reading mostly about the battle of the north Atlantic, and just how terrifying and terrible life must have been for Britain’s merchant seamen. The seasickness, the bone-numbing cold, smoking with cupped hands so Fritz couldn’t see the glow through his periscope, and then, when (not if) you were torpedoed, being plunged into the oggin where your head was cooked by the burning fuel oil and your body frozen by the icy waters. Sausages suffer a better fate on the barbecue. But they had to keep going out there because Britain needed 55m tons of imported commodities each year to survive and, by 1941, thanks entirely to the U-boats, the amount coming in had been nearly halved. We barely had sufficient raw materials to build ships to replace the ones being lost. Consider the maths. The U-boats were sinking more than a hundred ships every month. In 1942 alone 7.75m tons of Britain’s merchant fleet went to the bottom. To make matters worse, for every seven ships sunk the Royal Navy was getting one U-boat. So you might deduce from all this that we were getting our stiff upper lips kicked in. But no. Churchill once said that he considered U-boats to be the biggest threat to our survival and as a result a huge amount of time, money and manpower was diverted to thinking of ways they might be neutered. This set in motion perhaps the most astonishing techno-race in human history. We developed sonar, the Germans had to think of a way to get round it, we fitted aircraft with radar, the Germans gave the subs radar detectors so they could dive when a plane was on its way. We broke their codes. They broke ours. We built fast frigates. They built faster U-boats. We invented forward-firing depth charges, the Germans built better pressure hulls to go deep, and when we introduced four-engined Liberator bombers that could cover the whole Atlantic, the Germans developed engines that ran on hydrogen peroxide and breathed through snorkels so they never needed to surface. And all of this happened in just four years. Now, whenever a scientist or an engineer says something might be possible it’s always claimed that no working model will be ready for 30 years. What good’s that, if it’s a cure for cancer? Back then they were having ideas, testing them, building prototypes and getting the damn thing into production in weeks. Of course, war is a great motivator. A point that’s being made obvious by the horsepower race we’re seeing at the moment. Since the Germans aren’t allowed to fight other countries any more, they’ve decided to fight themselves with Audi, Volkswagen, Mercedes and BMW all engaged in a full-on scrap to see who can extract the most power from a road-going engine. It all started I suppose when BMW announced the M5 would have 400bhp. That seemed like a colossal achievement and I remember remarking at the time that Jackie Stewart had had less when he won the world championship. But pretty soon Bee Em’s 400bhp V8 was made to look like a paraffin stove. Mercedes came along with a supercharged 5.5 litre that got perilously close to 500. Then Volkswagen announced it was working on a Bugatti supercar that would offer drivers a nice round 1,000. And to show they were serious, they built a twin turbo W12 for the Bentley Continental with 552bhp. BMW immediately scuttled back to its drawing board and began work on a V10 for the next M5, while Mercedes pointed the eeking machine at its 6 litre V12. This was deemed a “bit light on the throttle”, so they enlarged it to 6.5 litres and added a couple of turbos. The result was 612bhp. A few supercars claimed marginally more, but when it came to torque this engine was way out in front with 738 lb ft. In short, it was the most powerful road-going engine ever made . . . and now they’ve gone and put it in a car. Putting 738 lb ft of torque on the road is like putting a full-scale avalanche in a snow shaker. It’s like lighting your sitting-room fire with Mount Etna: 738 lb ft of torque is insane. Maybe, just maybe, and this is an argument that hangs by a silvery thread, Ferrari could get away with such a move. The car would need to be carefully designed by people who understood aerodynamics and traction and it would almost certainly not resemble any car we’ve ever seen. Who knows, to contain and harness that much power it may have to look like a Saturn 5 launcher, or an oil rig. Or a pepper grinder. But no. Mercedes has simply slotted its amazing new power plant into the ordinary CL. Oh, they say they’ve beefed up the drive shafts and fitted bigger brakes, but that’s like saying, “Yes, we’ve employed Satan to teach Form IVb this year but it’s okay because we’ve confiscated his cape”. You can’t put 738 lb ft of torque in a standard coupé . . . or can you? I knew it was an ordinary Mercedes straight away because even though it had been carefully prepared as a press demonstrator, it arrived at my house with one headlamp not working and a driver’s seat backrest that wouldn’t lock. Standard Mercedes build quality then. But there was nothing standard about its simply astonishing acceleration. My wife drove it first. Normally she will avoid anything big, heavy or with suspension but her Lotus was away being fitted with more power so she climbed into the Mercedes thinking it was just another hateful squidgemobile. She came home later that day and could only squeak. I now know why. It is hysterically fast. From 60 to 130 it goes like a rocket, but, unlike any similarly speedy supercar, it makes no noise in the process. At 150 it sounds like a gentle breeze. And better still it’s comfortable too. Amazingly, Merc’s engineers have not felt the need to fit suspension made from brass and oak to try to keep the body in check. So you just glide from place to place, in sepulchral silence, at mach 4. It’s almost eerie. They haven’t fiddled with the exterior styling either, which means other road users have absolutely no clue about the nuke under the bonnet. I know you’re too grown up to be interested in this sort of thing, but on one trip a bloke in a Porsche Boxster came up behind and flashed his lights, trying to get past. By the time his girlfriend looked up to see what was in the way, I was already at home reading the children a bedtime story. I would dearly love to have seen his face. “No, really darling, there was a car there — I promise — and then it disappeared.” You could have an extramarital affair with a car like this, popping out for hanky panky and popping back before anyone knew you’d gone. Of course there are some drawbacks to all this grunt, like you need to remember that half an inch of throttle movement in an ordinary car increases the torque reaching the wheels by no more than 10 lb ft. Half an inch of movement in the Merc’s throttle and you’ve added probably 200 lb feet. This has an effect on grip. No, really, any brutality — no matter how minor — will light up the rear tyres, which are not made from kryptonite or dilithium crystals. They’re just rubber, and rubber has a finite level of traction. If you’re exuberant, you’re going to go off the road backwards. But what a way to go. Germany is still after world domination, but being killed by its attempts this time around might actually be called fun.
Do it! I will never get rid of my M6. It's hard to beat the feeling, sound, smells, etc you get out of a German car. Especially an M or AMG series!!!
The Mercedes are too heavy to really be fast I beat almost every one that was raced out at a private AMG track rental and all I have is a Vortech Jeep The AMG prestige is untouchable I still say do it! Could you imagine modding that with exhaust, chip, an intake!!! OMG
if your buying an AMG car (IMO) your getting it to 1) Be a monster, even though you probably wont track it much if ever 2) Be really really nice inside and out 3) have a BENZ!!!!! I like the benz's and am with the "if you can REALLY afford it...DEW IT!" people
I looked up this car and you cant compair teh prices. A new SRT8 with an additional 20G in mods will blow this car out of the water! So SRT8 new with mos 60G Used SRT9 with mods which I feel make it a new car 45G You can't beat that price. Well I know its benz! But an SRT8 killing a Benz on the track is worth it to me. And the SL65 is in no way a layed back relaxed ride. Look at eh seats I would rather sit on a bunk of rocks then that 1 inch carbon fiber seat! I feel that a Benz is way over rated. I have has my MSRT8 for 2 years and bought it used! Everything is holding out real well. And I beat the hell out of my car! Ask anyone that knows me track times and just basically run it hard everywhere I go. And I have not have any issues other than tie rods and tire balancing. I could not every think of the cost of basic maintenance of this type of BENZ. In short I feel for the money of a used Benz you cant compair what you get in a Moded SRT8. Point blank period!
What Clarkson is saying about the AMG is correct. Usually they suck on the track because the driver doesn't know what he's doing. Its not the car. 600 bhp and over 700 ft lbs can't be discounted. I recently ran into a C63 on Thunder Hill and it finally had a driver who knew how to drive. That car was a real bitch to put down and he wound up passing me and making it stick later in the day, although if I hadn't gotten hung up behind a Porsche I'd have at least filled his mirrors for the rest of the session, and maybe passed him back. He was slower than I was on about half the course, and if he didn't do his corner exit just right I had him on the front straight too. For me, I could spend $203,000 on better things though. No AMG is worth that to me. Too many compromises for comfort.
I think everyone is missing a key word in my original post. I said I was looking at buying a USED CL65 AMG. I found a great deal on one for under $40k. For that price I think it is a great buy. And in regards to a modified SRT8, I did originally ask what it would take to make an SRT8 beat this car. I looked up some specs and I believe it was Car & Driver that rated the car: 0-60 mph in 3.8 seconds with a quarter mile time of 11.5 @ 121 mph. How hard/easy is it to make an SRT8 do that and still be a reliable daily driver and how much would it cost? Thanks.
Holy crap! Less than $40,000 is damn good deal. Aren't those cars close to $200,000 new? I love my SRT8 but if I had a choice between the 2, I'd take the CL65.
At that price its a no-brainer. Assuming its in good shape of course. Grab that sucker as fast as you can. EDIT: If nothing else, hang onto it and sell it for more than you paid for it down the road. As you can imagine Benz service can be nasty. I have one (not an AMG) and my service intervals are every 13,000 miles and run me about $265, which includes oil changes and minor fluid top-ups and inspections. Thats great for a guy who puts like 70k miles a year on his car (me). Whats not so great: Lots of stuff has to be done by the dealer. I need an alignment and this morning I found out Mercedes has found a way to make it proprietary. Alignments have to be done at the dealer and I am looking at $200. Grrr.
426 stroker and you're there. Costs range depending on your build/crate motor...who built, what parts, blah blah...figure around 15k turn key for an average. Very reliable for a daily driver.
