Enthusiasts Blogging Our Favorite Classifieds
The last year of the R230 SL in 2011 gave you a color choice of white, silver, gray, silver, gray, silver, black, black, black and two different shades of red if you wanted to really get wild. So when I saw one in Mauritius Blue it sure caught my attention. This wonderful SL550 for sale in North Carolina takes the normally bland color palette and adds a great color from it’s Designo program. So let’s take a closer look at this blue-blooded Mercedes-Benz.
Okay, so diesel has a bit of a bad reputation right now. For an enthusiast, that’s not necessarily a bad thing – and when you weigh the advantages it offers it can be quite compelling. For sure there is mileage; a friend of mine daily commutes in an A3 TDi, and despite a relatively heavy foot he returns a pretty reliable 40 m.p.g.. That’s impressive. But surveying the real world results of BMW’s diesel offering seems to suggest that it doesn’t return much better mileage than our N52 gas motor, which is inexplicably capable of 30 m.p.g. on the highway at reasonable speeds. But what BMW’s first U.S. offering of a diesel in the 3-series does offer is some sport. You see, while M3 owners will shout all day about horsepower numbers, the 335d’s weapon is being pushy. The S65 may be a legendary V8 already, but it only is able to twist with 295lb. ft of torque. In contrast, the 335d offers a bit more in the M57 turbo diesel – a total of 428 lb.ft of torque, with horsepower numbers that nearly match the N55 at 282. Equipped with the M-Sport performance options, this is about as close to a diesel M as you can get:
We live in a world where the show rarely matches the go. But when those do match up, it’s a wonderful and almost certainly a very expensive thing. That’s what the Mercedes-Benz SL65 AMG Black Series is: show, go and expensive. With an increased track width of 3.8 inches up front and 3.3 inches in back, 661 horsepower with 738 pound-feet of torque all wrapped up in a price tag of near $300,000, this thing is as bonkers as they come from Mercedes-AMG. So let’s take a look at this SL65 Black Series across the pond.
I am baffled by this car. To be clear, not this particular car, but the GT2 RS model itself. 620 hp delivered from the rear engine to the rear wheels through a transmission that you have the pleasure of shifting yourself. Among modern supercars there aren’t many more that provide this same sort of attention getting power delivery and driver involvement. Super sticky tires and aerodynamics help keep everything pointed in the right direction, but there’s only so much aid they can provide should your right foot get a little over exuberant. I’ve featured a black GT2 RS previously and these remain one of the most menacing machines you’d be likely to cross paths with. Everything is about that aggression and I doubt any passersby would mistake this for your standard run-of-the-mill performance car. As the pinnacle of the 997 line it will be very tough for Porsche to top one of these.
With the current iteration of Porsche’s 911 GT3 RS now having been on the streets for nearly a year why not take another look at its predecessor and, in some ways, most natural competitor, the 997 GT3 RS 4.0. Released right at the end of 997 production, the GT3 RS 4.0 appeared to extract every possible ounce of power from the usable space of the 997. It’s a tried-and-true formula of stuffing the largest engine into the smallest space and then keeping weight to a minimum. But for some the real comparison comes not in the design or the performance, though both are very important, but rather in the piloting. The GT3 RS 4.0 appears to be the last of the breed that will come with a fully manual transmission, with the current – and presumably all future – generations of the model all coming equipped standard with PDK. This is a distinction that may largely be of concern to collectors as the last manual GT3 RS should be a prized commodity over time, but I’m sure there are some who simply desire the ability to row their own gears. The GT3 RS 4.0 we see here may be aimed more squarely at that crowd as it shows with a few more miles than is typical with these machines, and as such has a somewhat lower price tag relative to lower-mileage examples we’ve come across. For those searching for that money-no-object toy the GT3 RS 4.0 ticks just about every box.
