Mercedes SLS AMG Gullwing - too tight for comfort?

Is the cabin in the new Mercedes SLS too tight for comfort?

We’re hearing that the new Mercedes SLS AMG Gullwing has an uncomfortably small cabin with tight seats and restricted headroom.

Mercedes, quite understandably, has made a big deal of their in-house replacement for the mighty McLaren SLR. The tease in the run-up to the reveal rivalled that of Jaguar with the new XJ, and included everything from ‘official’ spy shots to ‘official ‘ spy video.

We weren’t hugely enamoured by the styling in the early camouflaged shots, but we came round enough when we saw the car in the flesh and accept it as more an homage to the 300SL than a pastiche. And despite some concerns that it won’t stack up against the SLR on the road, the news that Mercedes are working on an SLS AMG Black Series should address that concern – at a price.

But we had an interesting conversation with a Mercedes dealer principle this week about the SLS. The guy in question is not a UK dealer, but one who supplies a market across the Atlantic. He went off to Mercedes for a dealer launch of the SLS prior to the official Frankfurt launch – and came away deeply unimpressed.

It wasn’t the styling or performance that concerned him, but the lack of room. Now he’s not a small guy, but nor is he the biggest bloater in the world. He may even be considered ‘average’ by US standards. But he couldn’t sit comfortably in the SLS. The seats were far too tight (to quote Martin Clunes “I don’t have a Recaro shaped arse”) but what concerned him most was that he couldn’t sit upright. There was just no headroom, probably down to the gullwing doors which form part of the roof (like the doors on the original GT40, where you had to be smaller than 5’8″ to fit in).

Now the seat issue could be resolved by fitting more accommodating seats. But that would probably exacerbate the headroom problem unless the seats were very skinny-bottomed. And it may be the dealer principle is a very long-bodied, short legged freak. But in his words “…I fit in an SL just fine”.

With the US a big market for Mercedes this looks like an issue that needs to be addressed. Or maybe Mercedes could limit sales in the US to the SLS Roadster?!