Who do you think you are?

The DNA of the SL is a confused mixture of sports car and boulevard cruiser, but Mercedes-Benz passing responsibility for it to AMG surely signals a new firm focus on dynamics. Richard Lane tests the theory against the finest rival out there.

- Richard Lane

People like Timo Nordheim have been embellishing the Mercedes-Benz SL story since the early 1990s, piping habanero sauce into dishes that you would never expect to blow your head off. As engine builders at AMG, for them it's all part of a day's work. Nordheim and his many forebears have been behind the rortiest, the most unhinged (hello, Black Series) and occasionally the most sublime SLS, as was the case when the debonair R129 was loaded with the 518bhp 7.3-litre V12 that AMG later supplied to Pagani. There has been so much to love, and yet in SL lore AMG was never more than a mere flavour.

Then, last year, big changes. The launch of the R232 SL signalled to the world that custodianship of the model name, not to mention the engineering programme, had been transferred away from the mother ship to Timo's lot. That's right: the aristocratic old SL given to potty-mouthed AMG. It's like leaving your angelic grandma in the care of Noel Gallagher. Which, in fairness, could be hilarious.

It means Nordheim and co will no longer be external contractors roped in to amp up the SL ad hoc. Their work will be fundamental to every SL built. AMG versions of this long-snouted grand tourer will no longer be soft-bellied, Sindelfingenmade machines tickled around the chassis, stuffed with V8 muscle and sent out to dice with more bespoke-built prize fighters from other makes. Instead, in a radical overhaul of the famous model's ethos, they will be conceived and developed from the ground up in Affalterbach, meaning that AMG is no longer just a flavour of SL but instead the flavour of SL. It's a full personality transplant, aimed at turning the SL from topless grand tourer into the drop-top sports-cum- supercar, in the process making the AMG GT Roadster redundant.