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Under the hood, the SLR is powered by a Mercedes-Benz and AMG tuned 5.5-liter 24-valve V8. However, this is no ordinary eight-cylinder engine—it is built with care, by hand, at the custom engine manufacturing facility. It features another company trademark as well: the Kompressor technology. Supercharging the all-aluminum powerplant enables the SLR to have a power figure of 626 horsepower and a jaw-shattering 780 Newton-meters of torque from as low as 3,250 rpm, all of it being channeled to the rear wheels. Responsible for managing the engine’s brutal output is a custom-made five-speed automatic transmission with sequential shifting. Sliding the shifter towards the “Manual” enables the driver to shift using steering-wheel mounted buttons or the selector’s Touchshift function. In addition, the SLR has three preset stages: “Sport”, “SuperSport” and “Race”—all of which vary the shifting times. The deadly combination of the engine and the transmission enables the SLR to hit 100 km/h from complete standstill in just 3.8 seconds; the proverbial figure of 300 km/h is attainable in just 28.8 seconds. The SLR’s terminal velocity is set provisionally at 334 km/h. During the car’s long development program, spy photographers snapped up several pictures of rival supercars in Mercedes-Benz’s test track, particularly those that came in a less than subtle shade of Scarlet Red. McLaren Mercedes-Benz Formula One superstar, David Coulthard, is said to have lent a hand during the car’s final development and testing program. |
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