Price: $130K (12.9M KSh)

Engine: 4.0L V8 Twin Turbo

Power/Torque: 500+BHP/472+ ft*lbs

Relative Tech: Hot inside V, Dry Sump, 3rd Gen Direct Injection

The innovative part is obviously the engine, the risky part is the engine as well. The engine is equipped with a twin turbo system that sits inside the engine block. This new coupe, which shouldn’t be compared to the outgoing SLS, will sit at the top tier of the AMG performance machines. The direct competitors of this coupe in my opinion comes from the German brands; the Audi R8 and Porsche 911. A side competitor will be the GTR.

(I’m not too fond of turbos or know an awful aught about them, so most of my comments might be subjective. )

Through the history of turbocharging one of the greatest issues and problems they have faced is reliability & turbo-lag. The former is an extremely broad statement and the latter can also be grouped with it. However I feel that turbo-lag is always an issue with tuners and sits in its own domain. I won’t dive into reliability issues with turbos, however my stance is that they add another expensive job to fix instead of worrying only about the engine itself, just as an AWD system vs RWD (or FWD).

Mercedes’ innovative engine design of this new V8 helps solve the ever looming issue of turbo-lag, by having the turbo charger directly mounted to the engine block, thus saving time for compressed air to travel into the cylinders.

This however could create a double edge sword in reliability. Usually when my friends had a turbo failure it was “easy” for them to notice as the turbo was mounted outside the engine bay. This gave them some sort of insight to see if turbo had failed–compressor fan breaking, outlet/inlet leak, diverter/blow off failure, etc–or if the problem was due to the engine itself. In the case of this new design engine failure vs turbo failure might not be as intuitive as before. Leading to more than needed engine maintenance if failure to the bay were to happen.

Although reliability may be a major draw back; Mercedes is smart enough to couple this new technology to a car that: 1) won’t see too much road time early in its life, 2) mass production will be limited, and 3) price point of parts might deter some tuners from getting into it at this point. Whatever the case this “hot inside V” coupled with dry sump technology is in its early stages so only time and owners will tell. 🙂