Mercedes-Benz SLC: Better Start Saving...

A Mercedes SLS AMG is a little over £168,000, and that’s before you’ve tackled the notorious options list on which you’ll find a £6k option for “Interior Carbon” (gulp). This could easily see the price of an SLS sky rocket to well over £200,000. That’s a lot even for the impossibly cool, and surprisingly practical, gull-wing doors.

Realising then that the SLS is out of reach for many people, Mercedes boss Dieter Zetsche has just confirmed production of the long-awaited “baby-SLS” which will go-ahead in 2014. The coupé will be called the SLC, and start at an infinitely more reasonable £75,000 (I said reasonable, not cheap).

That puts it firmly in the firing line of Aston Martin’s V8 Vantage, the V8-engined Audi R8, and the undisputed king of the segment, the Porsche 911 (below).

We don’t know much else about it right now but what we can say is that the front-engined SLC, which will be a joint venture between Mercedes’ passenger car department and their performance division, AMG, will have to go quite some way to pry the bankers from their 911s.

The SLC and CLA (which debuted at the Beijing Motor Show earlier this week with a Jessie J guest promo) will play key roles in Mercedes’ immediate expansion strategy that will see 10 new and 22 heavily redesigned models released before the end of 2015.

Is there any bad news? To keep costs down, it’s unlikely that the SLC will retain the gull-wings (below). Sorry about that, but if the SLS, CLS, CLA, C-Class Coupé and Autocar’s speculative rendering (top) are anything to go by, it’ll almost definitely be a looker regardless.

So the message I report to you readers is this. Get saving. Now.

Top Image: Autocar Magazine