So I moved up from a 550 to a 63 this month. I managed to find an 09 silver arrow with P30 and it's a blast.

I'm good on maintenance,I'm aware of all the known issues. This one has 22k on it, so it's still in excellent shape. What I need help with is driving it. The transmission is so very different in this one compared to the 550. I've been trying to use manual mode and get those sweet sweet rev matching sounds with the burble and pops. Just kind of struggling with it, Going from 3rd to 2nd I can get it almost every time but struggle with the other transitions. I don't even bother with 2-1, I just have better luck leaving it in second then letting it do it's own thing down to first gear.

How do you guys drive yours?

 

Well, since you asked!!
My SL600 also had the twin turbo V12 and the car was so fast, all you had to do was put it in Drive and step on the gas. In a very few seconds without even full throttle, (I don't think I ever floored it) you're going so fast you have to let off the gas. I'm not sure where you drive yours, but most guys who have this car probably do just that. At whatever speed you're going, if you want to go faster, simply hit the gas. Mine had a Renntech ECU tune and Bosch 010 intercooler pump, so about 650 horsepower or close to it. When covid BS came along I freaked out and thought the world was coming to an end and I'd be stuck with too many cars, (quite a handful of Mercedes and a Maserati and others) so I sold the SL600 to a buddy I've been friends with for 35 years, who lives in Montana where there are highways where you can actually go 180MPH without losing your driver license. (His phone GPS indicated that he's taken it up to 178MPH with much more to go). He comes from 2 states away to visit here, every summer for a few months and we are doing lunch tomorrow, as a matter of fact. So that car is still in the "family". Before the SL600 even left my house, I had R230 sellers remorse and bought an SL550 which was an awesome car but with "only" 400HP I felt sometimes, that it needed more. LoL. The SL550 would roar and zoom and go thru 3 or 4 gears, and you'd look down and you're only going 85, where the SL600 in that time frame would be going well over 100-110. Or more.
I was hesitant to divulge that I would ever sell the SL600 and so I didn't tell anyone on Benzworld, but that's what happened. Nowadays besides all the other cars, I drive another R230, a SL55 AMG, and that car (Kompressor) is just about as fast as the SL600. Difference being, the SL600 seemed like you were flying a UFO, it didn't really seem like a car, it just flew magically. You almost never heard an exhaust sound. The SL55 seems to have a louder exhaust, it's all original exhaust-wise, but you can hear the car roar a little bit. This car, I mostly still just put it in Drive and just go, it's such a fast car, what else is there to do? Answer: I upgraded the steering wheel with one from a 2007 E55 AMG, it's softer leather with more padding, nicer steering wheel, and I got aluminum shift paddles instead of buttons, also a transmission controller upgrade that makes the shift paddles live 100% of the time instead of only when the Sport/Comfort/Manual mode button is set to Manual mode. This way whenever I want to, I can tap one of the paddles and whatever gear it's in, it stays there until I give the upshift order with the paddles. It's fun, at a stop light I tap the downshift paddle it starts out in first, and upshifts when I tell it to, at 6000 RPM or whatever. But the car is so very fast it's ridiculous, there's really no need to do anything other than simply put it in Drive, step on the gas, and go. Where I live, you can't really go over 100 MPH, at least not very often, without the cops bothering you. My Maserati has the Formula 1 shift paddles and must be driven using the paddles to shift all the time, so it's more "work" to drive. I like how the SL55 is so easy to drive, simply put it in Drive and go. It's mere seconds till you're going too fast. With all of the cars, I love it when there's a freeway on-ramp with no slowski drivers in the way!!
What's really fun is when there's a guest in the car, and I drive "normally" (slow) for a while nice and gentle, as if it was a normal car. Then when a light turns green and there's no one in the way, and the road is okay (wide and smooth, etc) I let 'er rip and roar, and in six seconds or maybe less, we're going 125MPH, and I open the windows an inch or two to make sure we can hear the roar. The guest's response is always funny. "WHAT ON EARTH!! I didn't know this car could do THAT!!!" "Holy Crap!!"
For the roaring sound, few cars come close to my Maserati, it's a 4200 Coupe with the Ferrari F430 engine and Italian exhaust, all factory, but there's nothing that roars like those Italian cars.
Back in the early 1980s I owned a Chevelle Malibu that I'd bought with a blown (broken) engine, we took that engine out and installed a 427 big block from a corvette. I was young back then and didn't have the capacity to drive slow, and I got speeding tickets all over town. It was a regular thing. We had a Perry Mason type lawyer in town, he was famous, he had 2 Ferraris, an Aston Martin, Jaguars, Lincolns, Cadillacs, Mustangs. He was known as THE go-to lawyer for drug dealers, it wasn't any secret that he knew all the judges and could get you off off most anything, for a price. Probably paid the judges. When a drug dealer got busted it was a shakedowm... "What have you got you can give me, this is gonna take a lot to get you off", and that was likely how he got all his nice cars, and they were VERY NICE. He always knew a court outcome before the court day, it was a given; going to court was just the formality. I used him to "take care of" all my speeding tickets. If you got five or more in a year's time you'd lose your license, so it was imperative to keep those off your record. If a speeding fine was $150 you'd give him three times that and he'd say, "Consider it done, forget about it, I'll appear on your behalf, and if I need anything from you I'll call you." He must have taken care of 20 tickets for me in a three year period. I zoomed all over that town like I owned it. I was a great (italian) careful driver and never had any accident. Nowadays I drive a lot more slowly than I did when I was in my twenties. But with my SL's I do go a little bit fast now and then. I christened my SL55 AMG with a 90-plus speeding ticket, but I have a new Italian lawyer who got that dismissed. LoL

 

With these cars that have immense power, besides not getting speeding tickets, it's important obviously to not crash. You hear of people who buy a supercar and wreck it in the first 45 minutes. Happens too often. With this much power, the car isn't always going exactly where you point it towards, even in the best road conditions: dry pavement, straight roads, etc. Sometimes it goes in a little bit different direction than you thought it would, My SL55, if I'm going 70-75MPH and decide to change lanes to pass the guy in front of me, if I hit the gas a little too hard, can still slide the rear end out! If I were gonna do anything to this car now, I'd look into getting an LSD.