2013 Mercedes-Benz SL No Longer Melts The Heart

In 2002 I had a girlfriend who loved the Mercedes SL Pagoda. This was unusual, not just because I had a girlfriend. At that time the Pagoda was still in the shadow of the illustrious Gullwing, a plain Jane in the wake of a fulsome glamourpuss. Prices were low, and the chrome-bedecked R107 that followed the Pagoda was instead considered heir apparent. The Pagoda just seemed so… austere. How could the Pagoda’s creator, Paul Bracq, ever have considered it a worthy successor? 

Today the story is rather different. Of course, Gullwing prices are through the roof: that much was expected. But that flat-sided Pagoda is now considered pert and lithe, a stroke of brilliance from Bracq. It may not be Marilyn Monroe, but it didn’t have to be: Audrey Hepburn will do just fine. In the space of a decade or so, an opinion that seemed so fixed has changed completely. Since then I have always questioned the certainty of one’s taste, and indeed the certainty of certainty.

This makes design hard to objectify, but it hasn’t stemmed the prevalence of design clinics, where Joe Public is invited to opine at the latest proferrings of a company before they hit the road. But in an organizational sandwich, ‘process’ is evenly spread, and the criteria for success in numeric-based departments is awkwardly applied to aesthetic-centric design. All this could lead to a discussion on the degeneration of democracy to populism, and the subsequent erosion of expert insight, but I shall refrain. What I really wanted to talk about was ice-cream.

You might remember when Magnums first came out: fat wodges of vanilla ice-cream surrounded by thick milk chocolate. You might remember that first k-krunk as you took a bite, and a price that broke the pound barrier. Something simple (choc-ice on a stick, you might have vaguely thought) selling for more than the bells-and-whistles Cornetto. As an alternative to coffee on a hot beach, Magnums were a hit. 

The only time you’ll hear that k-krunk today is during TV ads. The chocolate has long since thinned and that aural entrance to the Magnum experience is a brittle krick of cost-cutting. Simply put, the appeal of Magnums was originally product-based. Now advertising trades on a memory; the rest is down to branding. You might say the same for the current SL.