![]() It hits the mile markers as fast as you want and shows up to the country club without breaking a sweat. Unlike supercars with extra firm rides that cause pain and stiffness after a modest drive through the mountains, the SLR is sophisticated, comfortable, and refined. It is properly quick, especially for a front-engine and rear-drive car.įurthermore, their testers gushed on its ability to hit a track at blistering speed, yet remain refined and comfortable on the road. Motor Trend timed its acceleration to 60 mph at 3.6 seconds. Per Car and Driver, it features a supercharged V8 engine hand-built at the McLaren facility in Woking, England, and makes a healthy 617 horsepower. The 300SD is still known today for being the car that will outlast us all.ĭubbed the SLR McLaren, an homage to the SLR racing cars of the fifties, this car blends the best of Mercedes luxury with McLaren engineering. For instance, a 1980 300SD discovered in a junkyard by AutoBlog clocked more than 300,000 miles before the end, and that's likely on the low side. Otherwise, the car was typical of Mercedes cars for the time and is known for having legendary reliability and the strongest and highest build quality, meaning well-kept examples of these cars are known for driving hundreds of thousands of miles and still running strong. The 5-cylinder turbodiesel engine produced about 120 horsepower, which sounds very low by today's standards but the late 1970s was an era when sports cars struggled to reach 200 horsepower. They are abysmally slow, for that matter, but the inclusion of the turbo meant the new engine produced enough power for the car to have reasonable, or at least acceptable, performance according to MotorTrend. ![]() Diesel cars made prior to this one were most often characterized by their defining feature they are slow. While Mercedes had a history of producing diesel cars that stretched back to the 1930s, the 1978 300SD marked the first time for an automaker to offer a turbocharged diesel engine (via AutoWeek). ![]()
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