If the roof is up or down or only if the roof is down?

 

A very interesting question. The owners manual for my 2013 is rather vague regarding this. It merely says the top cannot be closed if the roll bars have deployed.

 

I would assume from that they only deploy when the roof is down...

 

Time for a brave owner to conduct a test.

 

I look forward to your results.... 😊

 

It should deploy in either case because I assume the retractable roof is not strong enough to protect occupants in case of a rollover. Think of dropping the car upside down from 8-10 feet with the roof closed. Good luck. The SL roof is not nearly as strong as a roof with a solid B and C pillar. I know the BMW Car Club in its excellent driving schools no longer allows cars with non-solid roofs such as on our SLs.

 

Check out one of your prior threads
https://mbworld.org/forums/sl-class-...bar-works.html

The rollover bars will deploy no matter what. In case of an actual roll-over accident, the roof itself has very little structural integrity apart from the A-pillar which is very strong on the SL's.

 

I suspect that Daimler has some videos of rollover tests if we could somehow access them. I don't think NHTSA or any other testing agency in the US conducts rollover tests. Am I correct?

 

I have only found a C-Class cab crash test and the old R230 one. One that one the roll bar also activates top up. But the question was already answered in the other thread link. The roll bar shows deployed top up and top down...
Still interesting to see the cab crash...