A Resource for SL55 Enthusiasts

I bought my first SL55, a silver 2003 model with 18K miles, in August of 2020. I fell instantly in love with the car, and figured I would never get rid of it. That was, until two years later, when this one of a kind yellow SL55 became available. After I won the auction my wife looked at it and said “it looks like a big banana” and the name stuck.

I am pretty particular about maintaining my vehicles in the best condition, especially this one, which I’m trying to maintain in a Hagarty’s “Fine” (2 to 2-) condition even though I do drive it. This will be reflected in the amount of money I am willing to spend to both maintain and correct defects with the car.

Matchbox “Superfast” Yellow SL55 AMG

I find it amusing that Mercedes never offered yellow exterior paint on any R230 as a standard color option, but that Matchbox made a yellow SL55 AMG.

It was a limited edition of only 15,500 units, so I’m sure this will be worth something someday (grin)

Mercedes Benz to Bring Back the SL55 for 2022

I recently learned that for the 2022 model year Mercedes is bringing back the SL55 as a softtop roadster.

It looks like there are actually two models, the SL55 and a twin-turbo SL63.

I’m not in the market for a new internal combustion engine (ICE) car, but if I was I’d check these out. I’m a little disappointed that it isn’t a hardtop convertible, but it does save a lot of weight and complexity.

The First Detail

Even though I can’t take The Banana out for a drive until the title gets back and I can get a plate, I did want to detail the car. I really enjoy detailing but when done right it takes me about two days, so for this first attempt I was just going to wash it and see what kinds of imperfections I could find and fix.

Since the car was registered in California it needed to have a front license plate, but there was no front bracket on the car. Instead it looks like they got creative and used a couple of wires coming through the lower front grill. Unfortunately, this isn’t very stable so it caused the plate to wear a couple of divots into the lower air dam, but since it is already cracked in a couple of places it will need to be replaced in the future. In the meantime, I thought the wires looked a little unsightly and wanted to remove them. I had to remove the grill by using a small screwdriver to open up a series of clips and then I used needle-nosed pliers to gently pull the grill away. I was then able to cut the wires and remove them. I thoroughly cleaned the area with the grill removed before snapping it back into place.

Replacing the Trunk Lift Supports

One problem with getting a new SL55 is that now I have to go through all the other things I had to fix on the old SL55.

A common issue seems to be that the trunk lift supports start to fail. In both the service records for The Shark and The Banana I saw that they had been replaced, but when I got both cars the trunk lid struggled to stay open.

Reading the Documentation

The Banana came with some of the previous owner’s documentation. There were service records from about 2014, and records of the original purchase, but nothing much about the first ten years of service.

The car was purchased by an (apparently) very successful Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. He seems to have collected a number of classic cars, including an 300SL gullwing, but he sold it and bought a different one because the first one was too nice to drive.

Sending the Title Back (sigh)

So, I’ve given up on getting any kind of answer out of NC DMV as to why they won’t accept the title for The Banana without a notarized signature, so it is on its way back to California.