If you have already read the RENNtech CL55 feature, you know how this day started. It was late 2004, I was back from SEMA and killing time before moving to California, and Modified Luxury & Exotics needed two RENNtech cars photographed in South Florida. The CL55 ended up on the cover of the May/June 2005 issue, which is why I published that one first, but this SL actually appeared an issue earlier, in the March/April 2005 book. That was only the second issue MLE ever printed, and of the two cars we shot that day, this is the one I have always preferred.
A lot of that comes down to the light. We spent the day moving both cars between locations, and by the time we got to the SL, the sun was starting to go down. At the time, I didn’t fully understand how to take advantage of what I had in front of me. I knew the sunset shots looked good through the viewfinder, but I didn’t know enough about exposure to protect the shadows, and quite a few of those frames came out darker than they should have. Modern Photoshop can recover a lot more from those old files than I could back then, so some of the photos I always remembered liking are finally much closer to what I thought I had captured in 2004.
The car itself isn’t the SL55 AMG it resembles. It started life as an R230 SL500 with a naturally aspirated 5.0-liter V8 rated at 302 hp. RENNtech rebuilt and stroked that engine to 5.5 liters and called the finished conversion the SL55K. Interestingly, the trunk badge in my photos appears to read SL50K, while both RENNtech and the original Modified Luxury & Exotics feature identify the car as an SL55K. Whatever the story behind the badge, the original spec sheet makes it clear that this was a lot more than an SL500 with a supercharger added.
According to that spec sheet, the hand-built engine used a reinforced block, low-compression pistons, and a performance crankshaft. RENNtech added a Lysholm-type high-boost supercharger, an upgraded crankshaft pulley, and its own intercooler system, while a RENNtech ECU upgrade handled engine management. The exhaust exited through RENNtech sport-tuned dual rear mufflers and chrome tailpipes. Published output was 550 whp and 568 lb-ft of torque, along with a claimed top speed of 186 mph. For comparison, Mercedes rated the contemporary SL55 AMG at 493 hp from its factory-supercharged V8, although the two figures aren’t directly comparable since RENNtech’s number was measured at the wheels.
Sending that much power through an SL500 driveline also required some transmission work. The spec sheet lists a reinforced transmission, a TCU/computer update, and a performance torque converter. The car rode on RENNtech Monolite 10-spoke forged aluminum wheels measuring 19×9 inches up front and 19×11 inches in the rear, wrapped in Pirelli P Zero tires. Behind them were RENNtech eight-piston calipers and 14.5-inch cross-drilled rotors.
There aren’t any aero, interior, or suspension upgrades listed on the original spec sheet, which helps explain why the car still looked so restrained. The wheels, brakes, and badges gave away that something had changed, but there wasn’t much else on the outside to suggest this was making 550 whp. Compared with a lot of the modified cars I was photographing around the same time, it was almost subtle.
Looking at these photos more than two decades later, the SL still holds up better than most of what I shot during that first year. Some of that is obviously the car, because a silver roadster at sunset gives you a pretty good starting point, but this was also one of the first shoots where I started to understand how much the time of day could change a photo. I didn’t completely know how to capture it yet, but I was beginning to see it.
RENNtech is still building Mercedes in Florida today, and this car is a good reminder of what the shop was doing more than 20 years ago. Taking a 302-hp SL500 and turning it into a 550-whp SL55K without making it look dramatically different from stock was a pretty impressive combination. It’s probably also why, all these years later, this is still the car I prefer from that day.
GalleryPhotos by Jason Siu
