Gadgetory

the SLK used to be something of an embarrassment to be honest that worst of oxymorons a starter Mercedes but thanks to a serious facelift it at least prints real Benz now let's see if that's just a look as we drive the 2012 mercedes-benz SL k 350 and check the tech okay here in the center this LCD display the command interface and the Associated knob are standard on this guy but this 5.8 inch 4:3 ratio screen looks a little cramped even in a car that's a little cramped and as many Mercedes as I've driven with this interface and this logic of menus it never gets intuitive to me this multi ribbon thing needs a rethink I think let's go to our audio sources you get there without the radio button or the disc button which brings up the ribbon at the top you can poke around HD radio and bluetooth streaming or standard but USB and USB iPod and satellite radio are part of a $2,600 package that includes some other stuff you may not want and navigation with its associated traffic and weather are part of yet another package for $2,100 that will also include stuff I bet you don't care about like a hard drive for ripping music - that you'll seldom use and an SD card slot that I suspect you'll never use now of course the most important piece of tech on this car is the twenty second retractable power roof but within that you got a couple choices we have the standard $500 option for a shaded glass panel but you can also do a $2,500 option for the magic sky glass which would be tinted electrochromic Lee now Mercedes is out early on giving you an app to connect to your car works on the iPhone right now it's called the embrace app it allows you to send addresses to the car locate the car a mile away remote lock it or even let friends easily send you their location for the nav system to take you to them now the 350 part of SLK 350 tells you you've got a three and a half liter engine v6 your only choice puts out 302 horsepower 273 foot-pounds of torque which gets this 3,400 pound up to 60 in about 5.6 seconds while delivering 2029 mpg and all that power goes out through a similar one choice only gearbox a 7-speed automatic that has three modes sport manual and economy as well as paddle shifters and a little slap gain on the stick let's see how it all works now on the road here's the problem with the SLK 350 ik and put it all into one word for you when I first got in the car and hadn't researched it yet I thought it was a turbo 4 that's not a good thing for a v6 there's prodigious power but it's very peaky and surging it's kind of like a two-position throttle you're either on or you're off not cool not a car I want to take on an interesting road the 7-speed automatic is a very smart gearbox but it tends to be one of those that seeks those overly tall gears all the time which combined with the engines pickiness is not fun it's really nice in manual mode but if I wanted a car with a manual gearbox I would have bought a car with a manual gearbox and here's the one that drives me nuts coming to a stop right now and as I do sell and come to a nice full complete legal stop the car is going to put its brakes on in a hold mode I'm off the pedal now we're not going anywhere and it always does that it's a small thing but it adds a little bit of a delay every time you start from a stop which in stop-and-go traffic makes me nuts and I checked all the settings I don't believe there's any way to turn it off by default it always does that okay here's my bottom line on the SLK 350 major and successful redesign on the front end is let down by a dopey-looking and small car rear end that peaky motor is a pain in the ass to drive and you got to listen to that farty exhaust system the whole time to get it loaded up with all the tech gear we want CNET style you got to pick and choose from a whole bunch of really expensive packages and those are on top of an already kind of i popping $55,000 base price this car is answering a question that nobody asked honestly its twice as much money but just wait till you can afford a real SL you