Was watching Law and Order last night and one of the detectives was getting out of his silver SL, 500/55? and the top was going up while he was walking away from the car. He was not using key remote.

Ahh, the magic of Television. Those guys can make anything happen

There appears to be a remote-control (infrared) auto-opening/close option for the SL500 in other countries. I did a search on Google and saw that the latest 2005 CLK500 has a remote-control of the soft-top through the key button.

I'll check my manual to see if we have a sequence or remote function for our USA SLs.

Hey Idye:

I thought that we would/should have this feature! I checked my owner's manual (SL-Class) and on Pg. 184 under "Opening the retractable hardtop with the SmartKey (Summer opening feature)", we can close or open or do anything inbetween just with the infrared Key. The "lock" button closes the hardtop from outside of the vehicle while the "unlock" button opens it. You have to hold the button down until the operation is complete and it also states that the one needs to aim the remote key at the transmitter eye of the door handle. Pretty cool! I believe that the someone else, not the actor may have been using the remote key cause they have to focus on the acting...........

I think the key words here are 'not using the remote key' and 'while walking away' . Sure you can stand by the car aiming your remote at the door handle and you and put the top up and down as often as you like. I use this feature all the time.

The remote Key is dual action - it uses RF as well as Infra Red to unlock the car but only IR to operate the roof. The issue is one of safety - MB do not want to be sued for crushing a kids arm and the IR only works at close range.

Someone must have been pointing the key. It's almost too dangerous to use radio waves for a full sixteen seconds.

What? The power output of the key fob is tiny and but nothing compared to the output of the mobile clamped to your head... Beasides, as I say, the roof cannot be opened by the radio element of the remote, only the IR element and that has a very modest range.

What I meant was, if it could be opened by anything but the IR then it would have to use radio waves right?

Sixteen seconds is too long to lock onto a specific frequency and if bored, someone could brute force the security encryption and play a mean joke on you.

I dunno, I'd rather be lock-stock secure rather then have a simple novelty item that's almost as useless as COMAND.

...and that's why I stated that the actor was not using the key. Most likely, someone else closed the top remotely (2nd key?) out of camera shot as the actor was being filmed realtime. I caught those remarks, hence the statement

Also, I say again that having a fully automatic feature (top closing without any input whatsoever like when the Smartkey leaves a certain range of the vehicle on lock-up) would be pretty cool visually as well as convenient although as others have said, I'm certain it's due to liability issues as the first notation in the manual talks strictly about safety, limbs, clearance and stuff..

Another convenient trick would be to enable the top and windows to be closed on an unattended vehicle when triggered by the rain sensor on the windshield.

True, but your most of your response was about the factory IR roof open and close feature.

Anyway there are plenty ways to setup a scene for a TV show. Hence, what I said, you can pretty much make anything happen on TV .

Now that would be a good idea! Trouble is, the roof is quite capable of amputating a kid's arm, I tried it with a cucumber, so the issue comes back to safety.