Here in 2024, it’s rare that Mercedes and McLaren are mentioned in the same breath outside of talk about Formula 1. McLaren’s sports car lineup picks up where Mercedes-AMG’s drops off; a loaded AMG GT caps out at around $225,000, while a McLaren Artura starts at about $255,000. McLaren’s vehicles are mid-engined supercars, while Mercedes’s sporty machines have engines ahead of the driver — except, of course, for the Mercedes-AMG Project One, a super-limited hypercar that draws inspiration and technology from the Formula 1 team that spends its Sundays battling with McLaren’s own.
Twenty years ago, however, the two carmakers joined forced to create a machine that defied expectations and helped rewrite the supercar rulebook. It combined the raw performance of a bleeding-edge speed machine with the comfort of a gran turismo, and wrapped it all up in sheet metal so exotic, it made Lamborghinis look modest.
The 1999 North American International Auto Show in Detroit would prove to be rather fortuitous, filled with the predecessors of many of the early 21st Century’s notable rides: the Ford Thunderbird, Cadillac XLR, Pontiac Aztec, Lincoln Blackwood, and Jeep Commander were all teased in concept car form there, years before they reached production. But even among such impressive conceptual sheet metal, one car stood out: the Mercedes-Benz Vision SLR.
“Vision” is Benz-speak for “concept,” and boy, did the machine the Three-Pointed Star rolled out on that cold January day seem more like a dream than a production machine. Its name was a testament to the 300 SLR racer of 1955, but it was anything but retro. The Vision SLR’s front end looked wrenched from some spacecraft made by a four-eyed alien race; out back, a curved, bubblicious tail. Giant wheels that looked like spinning jet engines sat at all four corners, and butterfly doors evoked memories of the 300 SL Gullwing. It was undoubtedly a supercar — but unlike the iconic supercars that came before, it was front-engined. And it was way, way more exotic than anything else in the staid Mercedes-Benz lineup at the time.
So it was all the more surprising that Mercedes-Benz went on to build it — with a little help from its friends over at McLaren.
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Image Credit: Mercedes While the only production car it had ever built was the iconic McLaren F1 — and with barely more than 100 units hitting the streets over more than seven years, calling it a “production” vehicle was stretching the definition — British company McLaren had been racing for decades, ever since founder Bruce McLaren first put a car bearing his name into Formula 1 competition at the 1966 Monaco Grand Prix. In 1995, the team — seeking an engine supplier and partner — joined forces with Mercedes-Benz for racing. When the time came to push the Mercedes-Benz brand back to the highest echelons of the sports car world by taking the Vision SLR into production, then, McLaren seemed an obvious partner. But when the decision-makers from both companies sat down, the stakes of the project became clear.
“We had a meeting with all the board members, directors, and senior people, and I said to them, ‘What is that supposed to be in competition with?’ They replied, ‘– all the top-end people,’” then-McLaren Gordon Murray wrote in his memoir: 50 Years of Car Design.
Murray— father of the McLaren F1 and boss of the McLaren Cars division that created it — wound up playing a massive role in the development as McLaren worked to satisfy the demands Mercedes-Benz wanted met. In order to give the car proper weight distribution, the engine had to be placed behind the front axle, moving it back nearly three feet from the bumper – thus stretching the hood and front end out to obscene proportions. To create a flat, aerodynamic undercarriage, the exhaust pipes were moved from the tail to the sides — in front of the cabin. Bonded construction was used to mate the pieces of its carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic monocoque together.
It took three busy years to come together, but in November 2003, the production version of the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren was revealed to the world — and it all seemed worth it.
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Image Credit: Mercedes The heart of any car is its engine, and the SLR’s was a beast for its day: a version of AMG’s supercharged 5.4-liter V-8 found in the likes of the then-new SL55 AMG, but dialed up from the roadster’s 493 horsepower and 516 lb-ft to 617 hp and 575 lb-ft. A five-speed automatic with manual shift modes connected that V-8 to the rear wheels. Active aerodynamic features like a spoiler that doubled as an active air brake helped provide control as the car rocketed towards its top speed of 207 mph; brake-by-wire carbon-ceramic discs hauled it back down to a stop. And unlike most production cars presaged by concepts, it hadn’t had its appearance softened on the way to the assembly line; if anything, the engineering solutions needed to meet the performance requirements had made the car even more wild-looking. A $455,500 price tag solidified its place at the top of the automotive mountain.
But the SLR didn’t have all the attention to itself when it arrived on the scene. It arrived hot on the heels of the Ferrari Enzo, the latest Prancing Horse supercar and heir to the legacy of the F40 and F50, which merged Formula 1-inspired tech, a naturally aspirated V-12 and a sequential manual gearbox in an utterly exotic, race car-like body. And shortly after the Mercedes-McLaren debuted in final form, Porsche started production on the Carrera GT, a cutting-edge roadster that used the V-10 engine from a canceled Le Mans prototype race car in a body that managed to be both classically inspired and forward-facing.
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Image Credit: Mercedes The trio became bundled together in the automotive world’s mind — and likely in more than one garage — as a new triumvirate, rivals on the bleeding edge the way the Porsche 959 and Ferrari F40 had been two decades earlier. A new generation of supercars for a new century. But the comparison was a little unfair to the Mercedes/McLaren collaboration
The SLR was in the same league when it came to performance, but it was slightly more laid back than the high-revving, manually-shifted Porsche and Ferrari. It was meant as a super-GT more than a track-attacking supercar; it offered a real trunk, comfortable leather seats, a fancy stereo, and other luxury accouterments. It was the odd man out. As a result, sales never quite lived up to expectations; while the 615 examples moved in its first production year of 2005 beat the hopes of 500 cars per annum, subsequent years fell into the 200s, forcing Mercedes to cut planned production well below the original goal of 3,500 copies.
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Image Credit: Mercedes But while the Enzo and Carrera GT quickly came and went, Mercedes continued to refine the SLR as years went by. A sharper-edged, more powerful version called the 722 Edition — the name a tribute to Sir Sterling Moss’s 1955 Milla Miglia victory in a 300 SLR, which started at 7:22 am — debuted in 2006; an SLR McLaren roadster hit the roads the next year. A track version called the 722 GT was whipped up to satisfy demand among some owners for a one-make race series.
Finally, in 2009, the final official production version arrived in the wild, unexpected form of the SLR Stirling Moss. The speedster version had completely bespoke styling, all the way down to new headlights and taillamps. There was no roof, nor even a windshield. The new body made the car more than 400 pounds lighter, and the engine was dialed up to 641 horsepower. Debuting exactly 10 years after the reveal of the Vision SLR concept at the same auto show, it seemed a fitting capstone to the car’s run.
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Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren
Image Credit: Mercedes Yet the SLR’s story didn’t end there. Even while McLaren Cars was launching the MP4-12C, its first new supercar since the F1, the company’s McLaren Special Operations division launched an upgrade for existing SLRs called the McLaren Edition. Starting in late 2011, MSO began outfitting SLRs with new sheetmetal, wheels and exhaust, as well as revised steering and suspension components. 10 years later, MSO offered another upgrade program, this one called SLR by MSO and taking advantage of the interceding decade’s new technological developments to further improve performance. Then in 2022, MSO declared plans for a street-legal version of the SLR 722 GT racer, dubbed the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren HDK after its high-downforce kit. For a car that was seemed like a third wheel when it launched, the SLR has shown an admirable unwillingness to stay down.
