Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Roadster
Why 4.0: Same dry-sump 6.2 and transaxle balance as the gullwing coupe, without the party trick that makes the SLS famous — which pulls both the price and the reason-to-buy-it down a notch. Bought by people who wanted the drivetrain more than the doors.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Sound
The 6.2 M159 is AMG's last big naturally aspirated V8, sharpened over the C63's M156 and pulling to 7,200 rpm with no roof in the way. It is all bark and no intricacy, which puts it above the C63 but below the high-revving exotics.
8-cylinder · naturally aspirated · 7,200 rpm redline · rated 8.3 / 10 for engine sound
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €180k (2011) → €230k (2026), trending up · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
There aren't any — strict two-seater.
No ISOFIX up front, consistent with every other Mercedes 2-seater of this era — whether it also picked up AKSE transponder recognition like the contemporary SL and SLK isn't documented anywhere confirmable.
Soft-top version of the SLS coupe, same bucket-seat cockpit.
Mercedes front-passenger ISOFIX pattern — no 2000s–2010s Mercedes 2-seat sports car (SL, SLK, SLR, AMG GT) turned up with front ISOFIX (owner-community sourced, not manufacturer documentation)
The long version
Take away the SLS's signature gullwing doors and what is left is a genuinely serious front-mid-engine, rear-transaxle sports car that most buyers cross-shopped against 911 Turbos and GT-Rs rather than other convertibles — the roadster sells on chassis and engine, not spectacle. That shifts the ownership pattern slightly further toward boulevard use than the coupe sees, since a chunk of the coupe's buyer pool specifically wanted the doors for arrival value, and those buyers mostly skipped the roadster. What remains is a smaller, more driving-focused ownership base, though still one that treats a six-figure droptop V8 as a fair-weather car rather than daily transportation. Values have followed the coupe's curve almost exactly, a mid-2010s trough followed by steady climbing as the whole SLS generation gets recognized as AMG's last fully in-house-engineered halo car.