rachelpatricia

2014 SL65 Issues
I have a 2014 SL65 which I took delivery of Sept of last year. I am interested to know if anyone has had experience with the ongoing issues I am having. There are two:

1. After start and idle the car hesitates until warm. I was told this was not resolvable.
2. The transmission exhibits jerky shifts. It's software was updated and the wet clutch was set to relearn after doing so. This shift behavior is noticeable under daily driving or hard acceleration; in 'eco' mode or sport mode. The car when combined with the hesitation feels like it "hops" as it does it's low speed shifts when cold. I would compare it to a poorly shifted manual transmission jerkiness. The update made it better but it did not take it away.

MB had a trouble shooter drive the car for a couple of weeks and he thought it was ok but acknowledged the behavior when we drove it together. Says they have been pushing the car toward the track and away from grand touring.

This is my 3rd 12 cyclinder SL and my 2nd AMG. I am familiar with what I expect the car to do as I had driven them daily for 7 years.

I want to love the car but these problems will likely lead me to buy something else. It appears to me like MB themselves just don't care. The dealer has tried but can only do so much.

Any Suggestions?

absent

Wet clutch in SL65???
SL63 yes, SL65 has regular slushbox, a 7 speed with torque converter but not a wet clutch.

WSH

Have had four '13-'14 SL65s in family for past 1-2yrs; used as daily commuters and as wkend mtn twisties cars.

Two of them (a MY13 and MY14) have had random issues with semi-warm start-up; engine immediately dies and requires restart; MBUSA/AMG was unable to diagnose (no CEL, fault codes, etc). I finally self-solved issue by revving the motor slightly upon such start-up and have not had recurrences.

Always drive my 65s in SportPlus mode and indeed have a clunky gearbox in deceleration at <30MPH in urban settings; don't have any jerkiness/hesitation in any other accel/decel mode. One of biggest advances of this 65 is downshift/upshift blips (along w/the brilliant CCBs) which make both accel/decel almost equally pleasurable esp on challenging roads. But I suspect AMG needs to work on this box to smoothen shifting in these routine urban driving decels.

Other big advance over prior-gen SL65s is superb traction of this 65 even on wet mtn twisties....prior-gen SL65s even struggled w/traction on dry/mildly bumpy roads.

Have had numerous new 65s over past 8+ yrs and find these most recent generations of SL65 and CL65 to be vastly superior overall in engineering, enjoyability and value to anything AMG or any other car mfr today offers

Would elevate your complaints. No doubt this 65 still has bugs and some % are lemons (what car doesn't?) but on balance can't think of another car I'd rather drive (at any price), at least until 65 Coupe arrives to replace/supersede SL65, perhaps w/a debugged gearbox and software-solved semi-warm start-ups....

rachelpatricia

Thank-you for your comments.

My car has had all it's injectors replaced, has been driven by a trouble shooter for a couple of weeks and it not even a year old. It has been in their hands roughly 10% of it's life!

I want to love this car. I agree that it is superior in all other measures except the all critical drive quality. Your comments match my experience. It sounds like our driving habits are different; you are demanding an experience that is more performance orientated; mine rarely leaves ECO mode. I am at the end of my interest in letting the experiment continue.

My solution will be a replacement car. A Non-AMG car. Either a SL550 or a the new S class coupe. The downside is that the cars I have been ordering have custom interiors which means waiting for an equivalent Non AMG replacement. I will missing that torque of the SL65 but I will regain my peace of mind.

Thank-you for sharing. It was helpful to realize that this is not just in my mind.

WSH

My condolences on your 65

I have several colleagues who have bought abt as many new 65s as I have over the years....each of us has had at least one 65 lemoned for issues related to screwed motor/related computers...goes w/territory of any low-volume car made in <5K/yr (or <100K/yr) volumes, where not enough iterative feedback exists esp in real-world conditions

But we keep buying new 65s as our daily commuter cars because we're rather familiar w/more troubling issues of either non-AMG MBs (less precise/stable chassis vs any emergent maneuver, weaker brakes, runflat/nonperf tires, plastic interiors, nonergonomic seats/steering wheels, etc) or more costly stuff from VW-Bent or Fiat-Ferr or VW-P, w/far more enormous, rather laughable engineering weaknesses/ineptitudes

Reality is 99% of new 65s (esp of repeat new 65 buyers) are used 95+% of time as daily commuter cars at <35MPH in places like SF/SiliconValley or LA's Westside....so if these 65s don't work safely/reliably/smoothly under these daily conditions, the AMG/MB engineers simply failed to understand the real-world use case for vast majority of repeat 65 customers who can afford any car on planet....(and I'll admit I'm a minority of this repeat 65 crowd as I routinely enjoy my 65s both for mundane daily urban commute and for far more exuberant wkend drives in local mtns)

rachelpatricia

Thank-you again for sharing.

Have you had a lemon 65? If so, what was the outcome?