LOL

I was the one drooling especially over the vintage Ferrari's from the late 50's to late 60's.

Buy a 500 and Kleemannize it?
That'd get you a good 500 HP.

heh, I meant to say that I'd skip the CLK55 and go with either the E55 or a CLK500 + Kleemann. I asked myself the same question when I was ordering my CLK and the 500 with the Kleemann seemed like a clear winner over the CLK55, and I plan to Kleemannize my car later this year...

to me, the clk55 is better, i am not the kind of guys who want to mess around with the engine and do all the upgrades. if you want a nicely built car, powerful engine and amg craftsmanship, i would pay a bit more and get the 55.

New Road and Track. The CLK 500 does 0-60 in 5.2 and the quarter mile in 13.7 @104.5 mph!! Not too shabby, not too shabby at all, especially considering the 500 has the worst axle ratio of all the clk's...I'd love to see the times with the 3.06 of the 55. They said the 500 smokes the tires on demand...yeah

PS they tested the $61,000 500 against the $76,000 645, the 500 came in second but it beat the 645 in all acceleration tests and in the slolom. They should have tested the 645 against the closer priced 55

How did the CLK500 get 0-60 in 5.2!?!??!

That's a hot 500 they tested. The one they tested for the 2003 Sports and GT Special clocked 5.8 0-60 and 14.3@101.6 in the quarter.

Isn't the Brabus K8 0-60 in 4.1?

MB rates the CLK500 0-60 @5.7 and MB's #'s are generally quite conservative.

...that car was definitely running more than rated horsepower, 15% more in fact. The car's as-tested weight in the article was 3910 pounds, and its trap speed in the 1/4 mile was 104.5. Using this horsepower calculator we get a crank horsepower of 348, 15% above rated. That's CLK55 territory.

Running the same calculator on the BMW 645Ci in the article, which had an as-tested weight of 4050 pounds and trapped at 103.6 gives 351 horsepower, about 25 more than rated. Given that this calculator is normally accurate to within a few percentage points, it sure seems like both cars were, shall we say, tweaked a bit.

The last time Road & Track tested a CLK500, in this December 2002 article, the car had an as-tested weight of 3895 pounds and ran 14.3@101.6. The horsepower calculator gives 319 horsepower, a bit more realistic.

CLK 500's running in the low 5's really gets to some of you 55ers

I don't buy the calculator stuff per say, as the slowest times quoted are worse than MB's own and show 319 hp using them, if the standard MB 5.0 was making 319 hp MB would take advantage of the extra power and advertise it, especially against its rivals when making the comp. Granted on some super high performance models some cars have hp that are underrated for insurance reasons but not here. Secondly if stock SL500's are tested between 5.9-6.4 and are much heavier (as tested weight) than the clk what would the calculator say its power is for 5.9? or worse for the 6.4, something like 270hp? MB however may have used ideal conditions for its test, but why only a 5.7 then and I'm sure they would have selected a car with an engine from the upper end of the tolorences.

Times quoted by the magazines don't just involve "hotter cars" (although they do exsist and have been used)but also conditions during testing ie track temp ambient temp humidity etc Launch techniques,tires and the respective driver also contribute. Since MB's own time is 5.7 and we have a worst time by R/T of 5.8 and a R/T best (so far) of 5.2, I'd say a good avg time under favorable conditions should be around 5.5...we'll see what the other mags have to say soon, as I'm sure they'll use a 500 vs 645 test instead of a 55 vs 645 as they should. Hey maybe we'll see a 209 55 tested in the 4.5 range. As I've stated before in other posts I'd love to see what a 500 could do with the more favorable 3.06 axle ratio that the 55 has compared to the 2.82 in the 500.

I do agree that there can be a significant difference in cars tested right from the factory. I bought an M3 from a dealer a few years back and he had three on the lot , I was able to drive all three per my request before buying. One of the three was definitley the faster than the others as the salesman and I quickly commented on simultaneously during the spirited test drive.

I hope my 500 was one at the upper range of the specs, it sure feels like it compared to my 03.

Whatever the reasons for the low E/t's it sure is nice to see them low...the lower the better

...if you search the E55 forum, you'll see that I and others have used the same calculator to show that the new E55's are putting out more than their rated horsepower. You'll also see that the results from that calculator obtained using the E55's trap speed are in lockstep with the dyno results of stock E55's, both of which indicate a true crank horspower of 520-530, as opposed to the rated horsepower of 469.

Whether or not you "buy" the calculator is irrelavent. It has been demonstrated to produce accurate crank horsepower to within 5% of rated. It is based on Physics, and it works.

Let's try it on a few other cars Road and Track has tested:

2002 Z06:
As-tested weight: 3295
1/4: 12.5@116
Rated hp: 405
Calculated hp: 401

2004 Porsche GT-3:
As-tested weight: 3340
1/4: 12.4@114
Rated hp: 380
Calculated hp: 386

2004 Cadillac CTS-V:
As-tested weight: 4070
1/4: 13.4@109
Rated hp: 400
Calculated hp: 411

2004 Pontiac GTO:
As-tested weight: 3950
1/4: 13.8@103.8
Rated hp: 350
Calculated hp: 344.7

BMW M5:
As-tested weight: 4040
1/4: 13.3@108.5
Rated hp: 394
Calculated hp: 403

As to the SL500, here are its test results:
As-tested weight: 4190
1/4: 14.5@98.4
Rated hp: 302
Calculated hp: 311

All of these are within a few percent of rated horsepower. The reason I believe this equation to be accurate is that I have double-checked it, many times, against rated hp, and it is always quite accurate. And the magazines use correction factors to account for temperature/humididty variations, which in any case aren't going to net you 0.7 in the 1/4.

A 5.2 second 0-60 doesn't "get to" me; it's just not possible with 3910 pounds and 302 horsepower. The first Road & Track test was entirely believable; this one isn't. And I'd say the same thing if they tested a 209 at 112 trap speed, which they won't if it's putting out its rated horsepower.

If the CLK 500's as tested weight is 3910 and the sl weighs 480 lbs more (it does I checked mbusa), the SL500 as tested weight comp to comp should have been 4390, + I quoted the motor trend times using the 0-60 of 6.4 for the example of 270 which showed qtr miles times of 14.6@97.3 (M/T 7/03) this should bring the power down to around 270 actually 278. I illustrated this to show the wide swings associated with some of these tests. Where things get fuzzy is if you input the trap speed of 97.3 mph you get a HP of 315 and both #'s are from the same test so which HP figure is correct and using what data, the time or the trap speed or do you take an avg of each? (which equals 296hp and is underrated). According to the calculator the same holds true for the 500's 5.2 test, if you input all the data 13.7 and 104.5 with the 3910 weight and you click on the E/T data it shows a hp of 300 so it IS possible, but if you use the times then the hp was up to 349 and an avg of the two being 325, still very possible. I also said that some cars right from the dealer are faster than others. So a CLK 500 might just do 5.2 if you have the right conditions and you get a good car but 5.5 sounds a little more realistic. Now if I could only find the 55's 3.06 axle ratio somewhere for a reasonable price it would be interesting, very interesting.

I mentioned that some high perf cars (which constituted of the majority you listed) have higher hp than what's been advertised to keep insurance rates down. I think as an example the GT3 Porsches is closer to 400 as It too was just tested and its trap speeds were within a hair of the 400 HP twin turbo that has the benefit of all wheel drive for better launches which helped compensate for the weight diff between the two.


I knew these #'s would stir thing up a bit and that's why I posted them to begin with. I just read the new AMG engine replacing the 5.5 kompressor's; the 6.3 is capable of 600HP without forced induction...I wonder if that is underated too???

Got to love these times of high powered cars again, I'm so glad the mid 70's to eighties are long gone. We just need to keep energy prices down, I kept hearing that was supposed to happen after the Iraq war...

Link to MBUSA's spec sheet for SL500: 4065 pounds.

Link to Road & Track's test of SL500

In it, you will see that Road & Track, which weighs their cars on a scale before testing, published the following two weight figures for the SL500:

Weight: 4045
As-tested weight: 4190

These are in keeping with MB's published figures. Were you looking up the SL55 AMG? It weighs more along the lines of what you quoted.

Anyway, if we use the figure obtained by Motor Trend with the car's accurate as-tested weight (assuming Motor Trend doesn't use significantly fatter test drivers than Road & Track does ), we get a crank hp of 301.23 horsepower, within one horsepower of Mercedes' rated 302. I don't know where you got the 270 figure using a curb weight of 4390; if you use the same horsepower calculator I gave earlier with a trap speed of 97.3 and an as-tested weight of 4570 (4390 curb weight + 180 pounds for driver and test equipment), you'd get horsepower of 328 crank, but again, this curb weight figure is incorrect: the car weighs 4190 with driver & equipment, giving the 301.23 horspower at a 97.3 mph trap speed.

As to your question: the ET calculator is not very accurate, so it's better to stick with the MPH & weight calculator. For example, if we use the CLK55 test from Car & Driver, which weighed 3520 pounds (which translates to 3700 with driver & equip) got a 13.6@106, using the weight figure gives 343 horsepower, exactly where it was rated; using the ET number gives 290, which is way off, which shows why nobody uses the ET calculator. I'm wondering if that ET calculator is actually for *wheel* horsepower rather than crank; in that case, it would be pretty accurate in this case, as the CLK55's have been dynoing at around 290 wheel horsepower.

Actually, this might in fact be the case: both equations both claim rear wheel horsepower, but I know for a fact that the MPH/weight formula is for crank...maybe they screwed up and listed both as crank. I've seen it in other places, and Road & Track published it, and it is definitely for crank horsepower. But if the other one is for wheel horsepower, then it too is quite accurate, at least in this one example...I'll have to play around with it for some other ones to see if it holds up as well as the MPH/weight calculator does.

As to the cars I listed: all of them calculated out to *exactly* the rated horsepower, or damn close to it, using the weight/hp calculator. If you still doubt the formula, try it on damn near any Road & Track test & you'll see that it is quite accurate.

For example: look at Road & Track's latest comparison test of the Audi S4, BMW M3, and MB C32:. Here are the cars' rated horsepower figures, as-tested weights, tested MPH in 1/4 mile, and crank horsepower from the MPH/weight calculator:

Car: rated hp; as-tested weight; tested mph in 1/4; calculated hp
Audi S4: 340; 4080; 101.2; 330 (97% of rated)
BMW M3: 333; 3610; 105.8; 333.66 (within 1 horsepower of rated)
Mercedes C32: 349; 3830; 105.4; 350.00 (within 1 horsepower of rated)

That, my friend, is *accuracy*. :p

But if you still don't believe me, heck, it's easy enough to find out by doing the following: take your 500 to a drag strip, and see how many 13.7's you run. I'll eat my hat if you can do it, stock. It just doesn't have the weight/hp figures necessary to run those times. I'd say you could probably hit a low 14, maybe even a 14.0 or a 13.9, with some practice, but 13.7 isn't going to happen with 302 horsepower and 3900 pounds of as tested weight.

MB is definitely underrating the *Kompressor* cars (and the Turbos), but I haven't seen any evidence of the normally aspirated cars being underrated, including the CLK500, in anything other than this test, which is why I suspect that this particular car was tweaked.

I simply took the difference from mbusa of a clk500 and sl 500, which was 480 lbs and added it to the as tested weight of the clk500 that the prevoius poster listed which was 3910 + 480 ='s 4390.


Im sure a 208 55 is faster than a 500, that's obvoius but some 500's and 55's will be faster or slower than others, period.

Enjoyed the chat, but the girlfriend is telling me we are running late.

Being an owner of a W209 CLK500 and a W210 E55 I find the 0-60 time and quarter mile trap speed in question very hard to believe! The CLK500 is quick for sure but not that close to the E55. I haven't had the CLK on a drag strip but my stock '99 E55 would only hit 104MPH in the quarter and my '02 only .4 MPH better and both cars were significantly quicker than the CLK! Just some input from somebody with experience with these cars.